


Kara Danvers & the Sorceror's Spoon

by FlyingPigPoet



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Supergirl (TV 2015), Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: AgentHaught, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, AvaLance, F/F, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Kat Sandoval as Maggie's Aunt Elena, M/M, Major Dimples - Freeform, SuperCorp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 47
Words: 62,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPigPoet/pseuds/FlyingPigPoet
Summary: A Harry Potter AU with the folks from our favorite DC and Marvel TV Shows. I don't know where this is going, but once I came up with the title in the comments of Implications of Your Heartbreak in conversation with piecesofyourheart, I couldn't let it go without writing it.Major ships are both followed and abandoned as I just keep following the golden thread and hoping it all works out in the end. But it should be gay and sweet and safe for work.I plan to post on Saturdays and Wednesdays.I'm thinking this will end right before the beginning of next season...Second years: Winn, Lena, JessFifth Years: Alex, Maggie, James, Max, Vasquez, Lucy, Ava, Sara, Leslie, FitzSimmons





	1. The Girl Who Came Late

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piecesofmyheart](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=piecesofmyheart).



Ch. 1: The Girl Who Came Late

When Krypton exploded, astronomers noted its passing and the influence of its destruction on other planets in its solar system. Astrologers predicted a new hero, born to save the Earth. When Superman appeared on the scene twenty years later, a lot of people just assumed that he was the hero foretold, since he spent a lot of his time fighting He Who Must Not Be Named and his supporters. Meanwhile, Clark Kent and Lois Lane, having only a few years earlier graduated from Hogwarts, started reporting for the Daily Prophet. It was a dark time, but finally, four years ago, the darkness had lifted when Harry Potter and Superman defeated Voldemort.

The fact that this was also the year that Kara Zor-El had fallen to Earth at the age of seven didn't factor into anyone's expectations for the future.

Superman, being an adult now and exhausted from the long fight against the Dark Lord, had turned to his friends, the Danvers, and brought Kara to them. It never occurred to him that giving up his chance to train his young cousin in the arts of war might come just this close to dooming the world once again.

Luckily, more capable people took his place.

//

On Kara's first Earth Birthday, when Alex had asked her parents for help in making Kara feel more at home despite her trauma, the elder Danvers had wrapped two long and awkward packages in Superman wrapping paper, and thus the two girls had gotten their first brooms at the same time. Immediately, Alex, who was in her second year at Hogwarts, had taught Kara how to call her broom and fly, and taught her the complicated rules of Quidditch. Kara was a natural, and while Alex took to the roll of Beater, using a paddle to smash bludgers into the other team's players, Kara immediately showed the talents required of a Seeker: lightning fast eyes and hands.

"Oh, just wait!" Alex told her parents. "When we get Kara on the Gryffindor team..."

And they had agreed what a bonus Kara would be for the team of their whole family's house.

And that made Kara nervous. After all, she wasn't a blood Danvers. What if she didn't get put into her family's house? What if, Rao forbid, she got sorted into Slytherin?

//

Winn's mother was a Muggle, but she had been married to Winn Schott, Sr. through good times and bad, i.e. before the Dark Lord came back and after, so she knew about the wizarding world. Things had gotten heated when He-Who-yeah-you-know returned and demanded that any of his followers who had taken on Muggle spouses renounce and/or kill them. But Winn's mom had friends who had protected her, and her husband was now in Azkaban and the world had largely changed for the better.

So when Winn turned twelve and grew two inches, she had simply sighed and included a trip to the robe-makers in Diagon Alley, not knowing that this trip might change her son's life forever.

//

Kara Danvers had seen floo powder used before but this was her first time using it herself. Alex held her hand firmly as they stepped into the fireplace and pronounced, "Diagon Alley!"

They poofed into a very large fireplace in what looked to be a tavern. Kara giggled, but Alex's expression changed, became much more badass. Even before their parents emerged from the fireplace, the customers of the tavern noticed Alex, calling her the "Gryffindor Beater who can't be beat!" She even signed some autographs. Kara gaped. She knew her sister was good, but this?

When their parents came, they waved the well-wishers away and went from the bar to the Alley. Jeremiah took Alex to get her books while Eliza took Kara to get a wand and her robes. Eliza told Kara about the old wand-maker, Ollivander, who had died during the war. The young fellow who had taken over the shop, apparently the great-grandson, almost immediately brought Kara the wand that chose her: eighteen inches, yew wood with a phoenix feather. Kara's eyes shone.

At the robe place, Eliza sat in the waiting area with other parents, perusing her smartphone while Kara stood up on a stool and the women in charge stuck pins in her hemline. A boy a bit older than her stood on another stool next to her. 

"Hi!" he said, "I'm Winn!"

"Um, Kara."

"I don't know you. Are you new?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any idea what house you'll be in? My dad was in Slytherin, but I'm in Hufflepuff!"

"Um, my whole family has been in Gryffindor..."

"Oh, like Harry Potter!"

"I guess?"

"Dude, aren't you excited about this? You should be excited!"

"What if I'm no good?" she hissed, finally voicing the fear that had swamped her since she got the letter written in green ink. "What if nobody likes me and I can't do any magic?"

"You'll be fine. You've already got one friend, and that has to be magic!"

"Wait, what? I do? No, I don't..."

"You have me! And I will introduce you to all my friends! I'm friends with lots of people, not just Hufflepuffs. And I can help you figure out the castle. I've been trying to conjure a map, but..."

The tailors motioned for them to take off the robes and step down. Winn walked out to the waiting area with her, saying, "Have you got an animal yet? I have an owl. They're dead useful, taking your post home and stuff like that."

"Um, I have a cat from home..."

"Is it magical?"

Kara hesitated, then said, "He's... special."

//

Lucy Lane had begged her aunt to take her this year, as her Muggle army father always put off her friends and their families. So Lobelia Lane was sitting having an ice cream sundae at Fortescue's, reminiscing about the old owner of the place, before the war. When Lucy saw Alex Danvers with her parents and little sister, she jumped up to hug her friend. 

"Alex! What up!"

Alex gave her a high five and said, "Um, Lucy, so this is my sister. Kara."

And Lucy knew about the fire that killed Kara's parents, her weird trauma, and how Alex wrote to her back home literally every single day. "Hey, Kara. I'm Lucy. Don't worry about Hogwarts. You've got fifth-year Gryffindors having your back. Anybody messes with you? We will turn them into little white ferrets." She winked. "And that's the soft option."

Alex gave her a look of gratitude, which was enough to make Lucy Lane's little bi heart march through the gates of hell for Alex Danvers.

//

Jimmy Olsen had been begging for the last three years to get a buzz cut, like his dad had on his last mission, but his mother had said no until this year. Now he strode down Diagon Alley like a man, a fourth-year Gryffindor rubbing his almost bald head with pride. He and his mother headed into the magical equipment shop and his eyes nearly rolled out of his head. His mother was asking him something about pens and ink and scrolls, but all he could see was the younger blonde girl clinging to Alex Danvers and whispering to her hurriedly. Her eyes were blue like a Husky's eyes.

Alex said, "Sir, we're going to need two dozen feathers, six pots of green ink and a basic potion cauldron for my sister here."

Eliza and Jeremiah hid their smiles at Alex's taking over Kara's first trip to the Alley. They caught the seller's eye and indicated that they would be paying. The man brought out the required tools. Jeremiah paid for them. 

Jimmy nervously walked up to Alex, Lucy and Kara, who he had only heard about from Alex and Clark. "Um, hey. Who's the new girl? I'm Jimmy. Nice to meet you"

Kara pushed her glasses further up her nose, just like Clark always did. "Um, hi. Kara."

Lucy said, "Hi, Jimmy," and he got all flustered. 

Eventually, he said, "Hey, have you guys seen Lena or Jess?"

//

Jess's parents were both Muggles, so they generally didn't like going to Diagon Alley for the yearly reboot. Jess had emailed Lena about it, but Lena had said that her mother refused to take her, her dad was still sick, and Lex was off the radar, maybe in Germany? So Jess had owl-mailed Maggie to ask if she could join her family for the event. Maggie had said sure, because her aunt Elena, an auror, pretty much helped any of the kids at Hogwarts who were struggling, even on her salary.

But Jess had the gold saved up. She just didn't have the way to get there. Once Maggie and her aunt had dropped by, she had piled in with FitzSimmons and Sara. It was a tight squeeze, but chosen family were quite capable of condensing to get everybody to fit in the space allowed.

And when they bought the things for themselves, and pooled the rest of their money to buy things for Lena, the station wagon was very full indeed.


	2. The Hogwarts Express

Kara was boggled by Station 9 3/4, but faithfully followed her sister through what looked like a solid barrier. Their parents followed, having made this journey many times before. Up until this moment, Kara had considered Alura Zor-El her mother, obviously. But the moment the train pulled up, ready to take them away, she turned to Eliza and hugged her harder than she should have.

"Er, Kara, that's--"

Young Kara let loose, saying, "Sorry..."

"No," gasped Eliza bravely. "That's something for me to remember you by, until your first letter."

Kara hurried on board with her trunk and her cat carrier. She grabbed the first empty carriage she could find, hoping that no one would bother her, but not believing much that it would be true.

It wasn't.

A young man with slicked back hair opened her car door. "Hey, there," he said. "Max Lord. Might I join you?" He sat down before she could say no.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm waiting for my sister and her friends. There won't be room."

"Your sister?"

"Alex Danvers," Kara said proudly.

"Ew. Ick," said the young man's friends, "just as well. Let's get out of here!"

Max smiled. "Oh, but I really like Alexa..."

Kara thought, No one on Earth called her that. What a d--

The door to the carriage opened. Alex and Lucy entered. Lucy's glance swept the room. "Hey, Little Danvers. Need us to sweep out the trash?"

And Max was taller than Lucy, but everybody said that her Army dad had taught her martial arts, so nobody ever messed with her.

"Yeah," he said, turning a bit red. "So long, losers. C'mon, guys. Let's find the food trolley."

Alex helped Lucy with get her trunk above their seats. 

Kara looked at her happily. "There's a food trolley? Nobody told me about that!"

Alex rolled her eyes fondly. "That's why Mom said not to spend all your money on the train. It has to last you through December."

"I was too busy struggling to get Krypto into his cat case. You know he hates it in there. Can't I just let him out for--"

"No. You know what Mom said. Not until we get on the grounds and in the dorm. Once we're in the Gryffindor common room, you can let him out."

"But what if I don't get sorted into Gryffindor? What if they put me in Slytherin? Would he be safe with them?"

Alex looked shocked, but Lucy said quickly, "If they put you in Slytherin, the whole world would be safe there, kid." She didn't mention that her sister had been a Slytherin.

Just as the train started rolling, Winn came by and asked if he could join them. "The conductor said everybody has to be sitting down at least 'til we get out of London."

Kara squealed, "Winn! Alex, this is my friend Winn!"

Alex narrowed her eyes. "Aren't you the guy that jinxed the library computer?"

"That was totally an accident. I was just trying to use it to play a video game and my wand went off."

When the food trolley finally came around, Winn immediately bought two packs of Chocolate Frog Cards, so Kara bought one too after he explained that they weren't real frogs. Kara turned to Alex. "Why didn't you tell me about this stuff?"

"Mom wanted your calories and your expenditures to be meaningful. Her words."

"See, you collect the cards and learn about the great wizards, which makes History of Magic way easier and more fun."

"Is it true that the course is taught by a ghost?"

"Used to be, but he retired last year, went off to ski in Switzerland. The new guy is American, on loan from their school over there. James said he used to be a spy."

Lucy laughed. "He's always saying stuff like that, just to wind you up."

Other kids came and visited Alex and Lucy, so Kara got to meet a whole bunch of fifth years from Gryffindor, and the fifth year Maggie from Hufflepuff who came to say hi to Winn, and (Kara thought privately) have a look at her crush Lucy Lane, but Lucy ignored her and kept talking to Alex, who apologized for not saying hello, but Maggie just brushed it off and left.

Alex hit Lucy on the arm. "What is with you, Lane? She was totally checking you out!"

"Yeah, well if James hears about it, he won't be too happy."

"What do you care? He's a knucklehead."

"Yes, but he's my knucklehead. I like him."

And Kara was surprised that Alex had even noticed the looks Maggie had given Lucy, because she was pretty sure that Alex was straight, as they said on Earth. And usually straight people were oblivious to that kind of thing. At the ripe old age of eleven, Kara considered herself fairly cosmopolitan, or at least that was the word her cousin's handmade Kryptonese/English dictionary had offered for one of her mother's favorite words.

A second year came by to say hi to Winn, and he gave her a similar kind of look. Her shining black hair was in braids and she looked very serious. "Winn, have you seen Lena? If she missed the train, she's going to be in all kinds of trouble!"

"Sorry, Jess. I haven't. Jess Huang, meet Kara Danvers!"

Jess rolled her eyes. "The Beater's little sister. Great, another Gryffindor to make our lives harder."

She turned away. Alex's eyes narrowed. "Wait, Winn. You're friends with Lena frickin' Luthor?"

(And Kara thought that wasn't the middle name Alex really wanted to use.)

"What? She's nice. She helped me get through Potions last year."

Lucy shook her head. "She's still a Luthor. Almost the entire family was in Slytherin."

Kara looked surprised. "You're friends with a Slytherin, Winn?"

"No, I'm not. She's one of us. She's a Hufflepuff. They say that the Sorting Hat wanted to put her into Slytherin, but she begged it not to do that. Then it offered her Gryffindor--"

"Yeah, as if," said Lucy.

"But she knew they would hate her (case in point, Miz Lane), so then it said, 'Okay, Ravenclaw then, you're smart enough for that,' but she asked to be put into Hufflepuff, because we're the nicest!"

Alex said, "Pfft. You just made that whole thing up. You can't argue with the Sorting Hat."

"Actually," said Kara hesitantly, "um, I think you can. The Revised History of Hogwarts said that Harry Potter was supposed to go to Slytherin, but he said no, so he ended up in Gryffindor instead."

"Wait," said Winn. "You've started the homework? Were we supposed to do homework over the summer? I mean besides the essay on nonhuman rights, which I will totally start tonight after the feast..."

Alex shook her head. "No. Kara just likes to get a head start on things."

Then Kara put her head down and didn't say another word for the rest of the trip north.


	3. But At Least There's a Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sorting

Alex, as always, was weirded out by the horseless carriages, which Lucy had, somewhat emotionlessly, explained were actually drawn by flying horses that could only be seen by people who had seen someone die. Alex knew that even the wizarding world hadn't been able to stop Lucy's mom's cancer, so she didn't ask what they looked like. She didn't want to know.

She worried about Kara out there on the lake. Hagrid was on sabbatical and she didn't know the new Care of Magical Creatures teacher who was leading the first-years on the ride to the castle. But it was just as well that Kara was there, not here. Kara had watched a whole planet die. Boats were better for her first year.

They reached the castle and lined up behind Professor Flitwick, the Assistant Headmaster, who encouraged them to tighten their ties and look fitting of Hogwarts students. He gave the same short speech ever year. And every year, most of the older students ignored it, looking too much forward to the feast. Though Alex did notice, over in the Hufflepuff line, Maggie and Winn fixing each other's ties. She tightened hers too. She took great pride in being a Gryffindor, couldn't wait to welcome Kara into the family's house. Kara often talked about the House of El. Alex really wanted Kara to have a house here on Earth.

Flitwick shrugged at the inadequate response to his speech and then led them into the Great Hall. The ceiling showed the clear September sky full of stars. Alex sat between Jimmy and Lucy at the Gryffindor table, scowling across the way at Max Lord at the Slytherin table. 

Lucy murmured, "You know, we should really check out the Ravenclaws. I heard there are some cute guys there. You could do that 'study group' thing you do..."

Alex stared. She believed deeply in group study as a better way of learning. What on Earth would that have to do with guys?

Then the first years trooped in, looking scared. She saw Kara with the Crinkle, and crossed her fingers. Lucy noticed, saying, "Hey, no way a Danvers isn't a Gryffindor, right?"

Except Kara was only half Danvers. The other half, the Zor-El half, was still an unknown factor.

//

Kara watched the other first years put on the tired hat and then go to their tables. When it was her turn, the hat paused. "Hello, Ms. Danvers. Or should I say Ms. Zor-El?"

In her head, Kara thought, "Don't tell them, don't tell them."

"Tell them what? That you have the courage of a Gryffindor, the brains of a Ravenclaw, the aspirations of a Slytherin?"

"I'm not special! I just want to fit in!"

"Your heart is exceptionally large..."

"It's just Kryptonian physiology and your yellow sun! I'm not special!"

"That isn't the heart I was referring to," said the Hat in her head. Then it yelled out, "Hufflepuff!"

There were cheers and boos and laughter, and Kara caught the devastated look on Alex's face, but she went to where Winn was standing on the bench waving and she sat down next to him. He gave her an enormous hug. "You are right where you belong!"

"Oh, I sure hope so!"

//

Immediately after the feast, Alex dragged herself to the owlery to send her parents the news. Better they heard it from her first. As she entered, she saw another fifth year Gryffindor tying a small letter onto the leg of a barn owl.

"Hey," said Alex. "Aren't you Nunez?"

"Vasquez," said the girl with the boy's haircut. "And I suppose all brown people look alike to you."

"No, no, I just..." Alex fluttered her hands with the letter in one. "I'm sorry. I've never been good with names."

Vasquez's owl took off out the window. "Then learn."

She stalked off. Alex felt bad, but she could have sworn that someone had told her-- But wait, was that Max Lord? She should never trust him. She growled to herself as she coaxed her owl, Gertrude, closer and tied the message on her leg.

"Be safe," she said as the owl flew off.


	4. The Potions Master

Kara got lost twice on her way down to the Great Hall for breakfast, but because she had gotten up half an hour early, she still arrived on time. Winn was still half asleep as he joined her at their house table. Alex had left the feast before she did, the night before, which she was pretty sure was a bad sign, but then their Head Boy and Girl had led them to the Hufflepuff dorm down near the kitchen. Winn had explained how they often sneaked there for snacks, but she had eaten so much at the feast that she wasn't actually hungry, which pretty much had never happened since she arrived on Earth, and she was willing to take that as a very good sign.

Her sister, of course, was basically on time for breakfast, her bag full of books for her first day, because of course the older students got their schedules in the mail with the list of their required books. Since classes were set based on House, the first-years had to wait until they had been sorted to get their schedules, which were handed out by Assistant Headmaster Flitwick.

Apparently, first-year Hufflepuffs and Slytherins had Potions together first thing. That... didn't seem like a good sign. As more students blearily sorted themselves according to house for breakfast, Kara let loose a sigh of relief.

And then the owls all swooped in. This was one of the things that Alex had told her about, since she wanted her to know that the letters Kara wrote got to her quickly, every day. What Alex had not mentioned was what a bright red envelope dropped on a student by an owl clearly feeling guilty might mean. And honestly, Alex stared at it as though she had never seen one before. 

Maybe she hadn't, but another Gryffindor very clearly had. The dark-haired girl snatched the red envelope out of Alex's hands and took off at a run out the door of the Great Hall. What they heard next was incomplete but suggestive, and Kara hung her head.

"-exandra Danvers!... promised me you would... ufflepuff, of all things!... your father!..."

Winn looked over at Kara. "Yeah, my parents didn't take it well either. But on the bright side? There's waffles today!"

//

When Maggie entered her History of Magic class with the Ravenclaws, she was surprised. Like everyone else, she had heard about the American wizard who might or might not have once been a spy. What she had not expected was that this Professor Coulson, a white man, would take an intersectional approach to teaching the History of Magic.

That he would not only discuss Wizards of Color, Queer Wizards, and Left-Handed Wizards (because apparently, with Charms and Potions that was really a big deal), but also nonhuman magic-users (and why they were never given the respected title Wizard, or Witch?), Sentient Magical Creatures, and the dangers of time travel for all of the above. Maggie opened her Sorceror's Apprentice notebook and filled her quill with ink. This just might be interesting after all.

//

The Ravenclaw fifth years shared Care of Magical Creatures with Slytherins, which was just bloody unfortunate. Leo Fitz smiled as his girlfriend Jemma Simmons stepped into the room, and ignored Max Lord being a total douche. Then another woman walked into the room and all the guys sort of sagged. She was a transfer from America, Ava something, and her big blue eyes were riveting.

Jemma sat next to Fitz and poked him in the arm. "What? Am I invisible?"

But just as he was about to respond, their teacher limped in. He was young, compared to most of their professors, and he wore something halfway between a five o'clock shadow and an actual beard and mustache. He stepped up to the rock that served as a teacher's desk and laid on it a compound bow.

"My name is Professor Queen," he said, "Get your jokes out of the way now. I am a certified badass. I've been to five continents, collecting magical creatures to study, and then releasing them back into the wild. The care of magical creatures often starts with actually catching one to study. For that, one needs really strong tranquilizers and a really good delivery mechanism. Pay attention, children. They're not going to teach you this in Defense Against the Dark Arts."

Fitz and Simmons grinned at each other. They liked Hagrid. Everybody did. But still.

//

Kara walked into her first class ever, Potions, which Alex had warned her was crazy hard, scared. She had made friends with older Hufflepuffs, but not yet with those of her year, and she felt like she had when she first landed on Earth and had to acclimate to Earth (Muggle) schools. 

Fish. No water. That.

The teacher walked in, a woman with dark hair and slightly over the top makeup, which was unusual from what Kara had seen of the teachers here so far.

"Children," the woman said, and Kara hated her immediately. "I am Professor Dahrk. One of my predecessors, my teacher in fact, used to tell people that he would teach them to bottle fame, brew glory, and even stopper death."

She paused as the eleven-year-olds gasped. 

"Yes, a little too much even for me at your age. But he wasn't wrong. Potion-making is a delicate task only for those truly dedicated to details. The difference between one Sylph whisker and two could mean the hand of the stirrer... in flames. And of course no potion is permanent, so if, for example, you are brewing the Lunar Stew, you have to do it fresh each month."

Kara wrote down in her Sorceror's Apprentice notebook, "Potions don't last."

"So today we will practice with an easy one, a sleep potion. This is a slight exception to the time clause. The more yew root you use, the longer the sleep lasts. Too much will kill someone. So. Measure carefully. If your partner dies, you will fail this course."

All the students gasped. Professor Dahrk smiled.


	5. Processing the New(s)

The next day the schedule looked even worse, but Kara didn't pay any attention to that. There were pancakes for breakfast. That could make up for a lot of crap, in her book.

Winn watched her decimate a stack of eleven pancakes and he was still staring at her as Jess walked up to him followed by the most beautiful girl Kara had ever seen. Like Jess, her hair was jet black, but her eyes were bright green and she was grinning at something Jess had said.

Kara swallowed, then nudged Winn. Hard. 

"Ow! Oh, yeah, Lena, this is Kara Danvers."

Lena looked down at Kara, who was trying to swallow again, but the green in Lena's eyes paralyzed her. She waved with her fork.

Lena frowned, then turned to Winn. "Maggie says that Quidditch tryouts are tomorrow. Spread the word among the new kids. We lost some players with last year's graduation."

Kara drank gulp after gulp of pumpkin juice. "Wait, that was Lena Luthor?" She just managed to not give her Alex's middle name for her.

"Yup."

"But she's so..."

"You're not wrong," Winn sighed.

"I'm pretty good as a Seeker," Kara offered hesitantly.

Winn smiled. "Then let's be sure to sign you up!"

//

Vasquez sat down next to Lucy at breakfast just as her owl dropped a note and a Daily Prophet. She fed him bits of pancake and then he flew off to nap.

Lucy drawled, "Why do you always read that thing?"

Vasquez murmured, "Remember I told you about my internship this summer? In London?"

"Yeah," said Lucy reaching for the maple syrup.

"It was at the Ministry of Magic."

Lucy turned but immediately wiped her face of emotion. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh. And if I get top grades this year, I get a second summer. Dude, nobody gets a second summer there!"

"So you're, what, keeping up to speed? How will that help?"

Vasquez pushed the newspaper into Lucy's hands. On the third page there was a story about a theft attempt at Gringotts. The alarms had made the thieves run and they had not yet been apprehended.

"But that's impossible!"

"Right?"

"And now we have to run. Herbology with the Ravenclaws. One silver says they steal all our points in fifteen minutes."

"I don't take losing bets."

//

Jemma Simmons loved Herbology, since flora almost always followed the patterns of fractals, and quantum, and chaos theory. Her father was a dentist, but her mom was a theoretical physicist, so she understood repeating patterns very, very well, and she flossed at least twice a day.

Seeing the Gryffindors swagger into the greenhouse just made her roll her eyes at Fitz, but then she saw Sara and... Alex, was it?, sharing a glance at Ava, her Potions lab partner, and Jemma felt very protective. Ava, like herself, enjoyed following rules, something the Gryffindors weren't exactly known for. She would protect her friend.

//

After classes ended, the Hufflepuffs took to the Quidditch pitch for tryouts. Maggie had been the Seeker last year, because she was the smallest on the team, but she was really a Beater at heart, so when last year's captain, a Beater, graduated, Maggie had finally been free as the new captain to reorganize things more to her liking. And the things she had been hearing about the younger Danvers were totally more to her liking.

They tried out a number of older students first, immediately got a new Beater in Jess Huang (and Maggie had never seen that coming), but when the first years finally got their chance, it was hands down the fastest a Seeker had even been chosen since Harry Potter. The girl wasn't just fast on a broom. She was speed. She was the smoke that got left behind on the tarmac. And if the wings of the Golden Snitch were a bit, well, bent, after she caught it, no one was complaining.

Although, thought Maggie, Alex Danvers might just be a little bit... miffed.

//

Two days later at breakfast, Gertrude brought Alex a red envelope, looked vaguely guilty and flew off without even asking for some of Alex's breakfast: a bad sign. Once again, one of her Housemates, was that Vasquez?, snatched the envelope out of her hand and raced out of the Great Hall. The difference was, this time Alex followed her.

The downside was that she got to hear her mother's rant about Alex "letting" Kara be taken on as a world-class Seeker by, of all houses, the Hufflepuffs. Et cetera, et cetera.

The red envelope burst into flames and smoke and Vasquez let it go out of her hand in ashes.

Alex stared at her. "I, just, um, thank you. Vasquez. But you don't like me. I know that. Why on Earth would you protect me? I mean, my mom's being unreasonable, but it's not horrible."

Vasquez looked very serious, as always. "You're Gryffindor. I protect all of us. Some people's parents are just unreasonable and others are horrible. But you never know beforehand. And I just feel like I have a, what does Professor Grant call it? A categorical imperative. So whenever I see that red, I just..." She shrugged.

"So you're Ferdinand the Bull?"

Vasquez shook her head, confused. "He never charged. He just smelled the flowers."

"Maybe he never saw the right kind of red." And it made no sense, even to Alex, but it made Vasquez smile shyly, so Alex just went with it. "Thank you," she said. "Thanks, Vasquez."

//

Max considered his last name a gift: Lord. It meant he didn't have to ever say anything. People would just recognize that a surname meant something true. That was the way his parents had raised him. And although he was only marginally aware of how they had managed to get through the War without being sent to Azkaban, he still realized that he was what they were: opportunists.

There was nothing embarrassing about it. He had read Machiavelli, who from all his reading apparently was in fact a Muggle. But maybe that was how Muggles got by without magic.

But it did mean that when it seemed very clear that Gryffindor and Slytherin were in the running for the House tournament, and that the Quidditch matches would be crucial to gaining points when the teachers were so clearly biased toward Potterdor, his house was going to need a new way to rebias things.

To, in short, win. And Max was all about finding new ways to win.


	6. Knowledge-Based Assessments

In the first-years' second week of classes they were given tests, Knowledge-Based Assessments, or KBAs. The teachers groaned about them a little, but the idea behind it was to find out how much their students already knew about each subject so that they could calibrate where to start the teaching, or something like that.

They were told this at breakfast on their second Monday. Kara's first class that day was Astronomy and she kept having staircases move themselves as she tried to go from the Great Hall to the Astronomy Tower, and now she was completely fuzzled. She tried to ask several older students for directions, but they just laughed at her and said that first-years had to figure it out for themselves. She was almost in tears when she caught sight of Lena Luthor and waved wildly to get the older girl's attention.

"Kara, is it? What on Earth's wrong?"

"I have Astronomy with the Slytherins, but I can't find the tower and the stairs keep moving and I almost fell off and Alex has told me about how the teachers are if you're late--"

"It's a hex," said Lena. "They do that to haze you."

"The stairs don't like us?"

"No, it's more empathetic magic because of the older-- The point is, if I go with you, you'll get there. The stairs won't mess with a Luthor."

Lena took her hand and showed her the different portraits that were the landmarks for turning, or taking stairs, or counting doors. She got her up to the Astronomy Tower.

Kara turned, "But aren't you going to be late for your class?"

"They'll make me write a longer essay. I like writing. We're good." She gave Kara a gentle shove. "Now go."

Kara cracked the door open to the Astronomy Tower. The professor, a tall woman with a silver braid among her long brown hair, frowned. "You're half an hour late for your KBA," she said, handing Kara a very large star chart to fill out. "Mark the stars and planets that you know."

The other Hufflepuffs and the Slytherins smirked and chuckled, but Kara was thrilled. The stars were her favorite things (after waffles, and potstickers, and cute kitten and baby goat videos). She got to work immediately.

//

Kara arrived at the Great Hall humming happily. She had filled out the entire Earth solar system's star chart and included the neighboring systems on the back of her paper. She had not noticed when she handed in her test how little writing was on all of her classmates' papers. She was too focused on lunch.

She sat next to Winn, who described the latest video game he was magically hacking, and she ate three roast beef sandwiches with lots of horseradish, and he paused at the groans she was making. He was only twelve, but he was pretty sure sandwiches weren't that... good?

After lunch, she was in Herbology with the Ravenclaws, and she was actually on time, so filling out the KBA of all the basic British magical plants was a snap. She didn't even have to use half-super-speed. Again, she had included, on the back, more information that wasn't strictly speaking called for. Because if you happened to be in North America, you would need to know this stuff. Right?

The last class of the day, History of Magic with the Gryffindor first years, also had a big test with dates listed. She tried really hard to put something on all of the dates, but she thought the focus on England was too narrow, so she added stuff she remembered about the Americas, Germany and France, and when she realized that she still had fifteen minutes left, added some detail about China, Japan and Australia to balance things out. That seemed perfectly reasonable.

And when she got to the Great Hall for dinner, none of the first years she tried to sit with had room for some reason, so she found Winn and Jess and Maggie and ate with them.

Lena came by and sat with them, and everybody made room. Lena turned to Kara and asked, "Get to the rest of your classes all right?"

"Yes, thank you! I hadn't thought to use the paintings as guides! I took lots of tests today. It was fun!"

And Jess murmured, "Are you sure this kid isn't a Ravenclaw?"

But Winn went on his usual rant about the need to accurately map the castle, so nobody but Lena really noticed.


	7. The Consequences of Your Studies

Winn often spent any time he had between classes at the little roped-off swamp that the Weasley twins had conjured in the year before the Battle of Hogwarts. It was peaceful. So when Alex Danvers found him there and threatened that she knew at least six very painful ways of making him talk with her index finger, in the interest of preserving the peace, he asked, "Um, how high?"

"What? That makes no sense. I need to know how Kara is. I saw last night how none of the first-years wanted to eat with her. Why is she not making friends?"

"Oh, yeah, that. She did the Lena Luthor thing."

"She... what?"

"Well, Lena has a photographic memory, so she whips through tests and gets like 120%. People... sometimes take exception to that."

Alex blinked. "Kara doesn't..." And then her face went blank. "Oh, that..."

//

Headmistress McGonnigle took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She put them back on and looked up at Professors Coulson, In-Ze, Queen and Dahrk. She had already met with the others.

"So," she said sternly, "what you're saying is that Kara Danvers has already mastered all of the first-year material."

"I asked her about it," said Coulson, "and she simply said that she'd read the History of Magic twelve times. She showed me the notebook where she had taken lots of notes."

Professor In-Ze said, "We discussed this, Minerva. Some of our students are slow. Kara is... fast."

Professor Queen added, "And strong. She put all her arrows through the solid targets. We're going to need more targets."

Professor Dahrk said, "In addition to a phenomenal memory to rival that of Lena Luthor, she has an instinctive understanding of chemistry that I have never seen in one so young."

"I see," said the Headmistress. "Very well. Thank you for your comments. Don't let me detain you."

They shuffled out. On the wall, Albus Dumbledore's portrait said, "In theory, even though I do not actually need money, being dead, I would say that you owe me twenty pounds, Minerva."

"Oh, Albus, you always were such a know-it-all."

//

At the beginning of the third week of school, on Monday morning, all the professors were present for breakfast, and Minerva McGonnigle announced that Hufflepuff had won an extra fifty points for their house because Kara Danvers was being moved to the second year.

Susan Vasquez noted the look of mixed emotions on the face of Alex Danvers, but in the following days, no red envelopes came, despite Alex constantly glancing worriedly at the windows where the owls usually made their entrance.

//

In the Hufflepuff common room that night, butterbeer and pumpkin cakes abounded, due to the house's good relations with the recently unionized house elves.

And even though Kara suspected that the song "Danvers is Our Queen" had been repurposed from a Quidditch anthem to her sister, she wasn't going to tell anybody outside of their house.


	8. An Ounce of Preparation

The autumn colored the mountains around the castle red and gold. The air was crisp and Quidditch practices were dry. Maggie told Kara how the previous fall it had rained almost every day that Hufflepuff had the pitch for practice. This was much better. 

In their first game, they beat Ravenclaw, which, along with the fifty points they had gotten for Kara, put them ahead for the House Cup for the first time in years. The fact that they lost to Gryffindor next wasn't too awful, but Maggie increased the length and intensity of their practices so that they wouldn't lose to Slytherin, which had also beaten Ravenclaw. There were rumors that Max Lord was planning something for the game, and he and his cronies were often seen muttering together in the hallways.

In between practices, Kara was busy going to classes with Jess, Winn and Lena, and they all lent her their books so that her parents didn't have to invest in a second set of books in one year. In short, she was as happy as she had ever been.

//

It was almost time for the Halloween Quidditch game and feast. At breakfast one morning, Vasquez finished reading the Daily Prophet, and Alex asked, "Anything interesting?"

"Some stuff in Germany. A couple of Durmstrang students went missing and turned up in the Black Forest and it looked like their brooms were jinxed."

"Oh my god, are they okay?"

"Too soon to tell. They're at St. Mungo's. Apparently England has a specialist for whatever went wrong with them. Also, they've had no luck finding whoever tried to rob Gringotts a few weeks ago. Other than that, just regular stuff. Quidditch results. Here."

Alex read through the paper without much interest, but after that morning, she always read Vasquez's paper with her at breakfast. James made fun of her, saying she had a crush, and Alex just frowned.

"Dude, I am going to be an auror when I get out of here, but that requires a lot more than just being good at my classes and getting great OWLS and NEWTS. It also means understanding what's going on in the wizarding world."

"Okay, Auror Danvers. Then I have something for you to investigate. I think Max and his Slytherettes are up to something. They keep going to the room of requirement together after dinner... Almost every evening, except when they have Quidditch practice. I'm worried."

"Why?"

"Because once they all brought their brooms under their robes."

Alex considered the possibilities, then said, "They have practice tonight. I have two ideas, but we're going to need help."

//

In Potions that afternoon, James had switched seats with one of the other Gryffindors and maneuvered himself so that he was partnered with Ava Sharpe of the Ravenclaws. She frowned when the tall boy put down his bag on the desk and started to pull out his cauldron and wand. They looked up at the board for the directions for the potion they would be making, the Confusing Concoction.

She chopped the herbs very carefully with her silver knife, while he counted out cacao beans and poured the majo mizu over the frogsbane. Ava sprinkled the herbs into the cauldron in a counterclockwise circle as he dropped the beans in very slowly. 

"Is the flame high enough?" she asked. 

"I never know with this stuff. You're the Ravenclaw. I bow to your judgment."

She prodded the flame with her wand, noticing that Fitz was working with Alex and Sara was working with Simmons. She murmured, "Do I detect a plot, Mr. Olsen?"

"You could say that. When we pour off the vial for Professor Dahrk, pour off extra into these smaller vials. And bring them with you to the Room of Requirement in the free hour before dinner. Okay?"

"You know I don't trust any of you Gryffindors, right?"

"We're trying to protect Kara and Maggie."

"From whom?"

"Max."

"I'm in."

//

It was FitzSimmons who figured out how to do it. Of course it was.

The Room of Requirement was set up so that no one who didn't need what you needed could find your version of the room. But they had figured out a loophole about needing to know what was in your version of the room. They figured it out after puzzling over a strange footnote in Hermione Granger's autobiography. After that it was just applied charms.

And FitzSimmons had plenty of charm.

//

They had agreed to say nothing to any of the Hufflepuffs. Quidditch was dangerous enough without adding the threat of impending death. The common rooms of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were bewitched to muffle sound while the students practiced spells on each other until midnight.

In the Slytherin common room, the team sat in a dark corner sniggering about their fiendish plans, like a passel of super-villains-in-training.

The Hufflepuff common room was empty. The team had gathered down in the kitchen with their friends the house elves to goggle as Kara Danvers carb-loaded. It was a thing of beauty.


	9. A Pound of Cure

On the morning of Halloween, breakfast was a feast of its own, with waffles and pumpkin pasties, bangers and mash and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Jelly Beans. Maybe not the breakfast of champions, but no one complained.

At the Hufflepuff table, Maggie was trying to loosen up Kara's tense shoulders, murmuring motivational type things the way team captains do. Then it was time to head off to the pitch for warm-ups and suit-up.

In the locker room Maggie gave the speech about the tenacity of badgers, how the danger of a snake in a dangerous place is two fangs, but the danger of a badger in a dangerous place is eighteen sharpened claws, thirty-four teeth and a really, really bad mood.

It wasn't the Battle of Agincourt, or even the Battle of Hogwarts, but it would have to do.

//

Max was cocky. His locker room speech was much shorter. "We can probably win this without the enhancements, so let's not waste them if we don't have to. We might need them later to beat Gryffindor. But we simply cannot be beat again by the Hufflepuffs, so if I call a time-out and say 'Salazar,' the plan is on. Until then, do not do anything except play like the Slytherins you are. To victory!"

"Victory!"

//

Fitz, Simmons and Ava were strategically placed throughout the stands, each with a squad of ten other students of different years, who had spent the evening before practicing defensive spells suitable for their year. They were ready for a decent if not encyclopedic range of disasters that might happen, both those that had historically happened at games and ones that the more paranoid among them had dreamt up.

Simmons had said in the common room before they went down to the match, "Here's the worst part, people. If things go catastrophically wrong, we might actually have to protect the Slytherin players from dying too. So you should keep that in mind. Okay, let's go."

Ava said, "Well, not exactly the St. Crispin's Day speech, was it?"

Fitz sighed, "We few, we happy few. We band of buggered."

//

When they got to the pitch, the entire Gryffindor House was deployed widely throughout the stands. Nobody messed with their family, and Kara was a Gryffindor in all but name, by adoptive blood or something. Details. Kara was Alex's sister and Maggie was her best friend (and if anybody might have occasionally shared suspicions that Alex and Maggie might be more than that, they were very careful not to have those particular whispers get back to Alex. Very careful.) The point was, this group of Gryffindors was particularly protective of this group of Hufflepuffs.

And the fact that the threat was Max Lord and the Slytherettes just brought everybody else on board without question.

Alex looked around at the excitement on the faces of the Hufflepuff and Slytherin House students, the fierce concentration on pretty much all of the other students. She nodded with satisfaction. Most generals got more than seven hours to prepare for battle, but she thought that studying about the Battle of Hogwarts, and for many students, learning about their own parents' participation, had brought a kind of preparation that went way beyond the playing fields of Eton.

But all of that only made her narrow her eyes and frown as the game began and went on and the two teams remained neck and neck for two hours. She knew the dangers of an apparent false alarm, of soldiers waiting too long for the threat to eventuate, of the way a battle could be lost by being too small and seemingly inconsequential. Eliza Danvers' father had been an army man, and Alex had read all his books on warfare and battle planning. So she moved around the stands encouraging the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws in ways that wouldn't alarm the Hufflepuffs or tip off the Slytherins. That part wasn't too terribly hard, as the Houses of playing teams generally stayed relatively apart, and everybody wore their house colors so they were easily recognizable. 

But doing that, moving against a roaring crowd, for two hours? It was exhausting. And when the Hufflepuff Chasers managed to get six goals with the Quaffle in a row, putting Hufflepuff eighty points ahead, and the Slytherin Keeper looking exhausted, even Alex doubted her battle plan.

And for a moment, she thought maybe Max had too, because he looked pissed and called a time-out. But his short time-out couldn't have allowed him much time for a change in plans, because after only a few words exchanged, the team shot back up into the sky.

Alex stomach sank even as her heart began to race. She raised her wand into the air and shot up a flurry of red sparks. All around the stadium, students raised their wands and replied with red sparks. Paranoid she might be, as a few students had whispered, but by Rao, she would see this through.

//

Kara flew over the stands grinning and waving to her friends. The red sparks from her sister and their friends seemed like the equivalent of lighters at a concert, a show of support.

"Woooo hoooo!" She began to search above and below for the Golden Snitch. The end was near.

//

Like Lucy who was actually in Alex's house, Maggie Sawyer had been friends with Alex for four years. But unlike Lucy, who mostly focused on gossip and jokes and getting by in classes, Maggie watched Alex. She noticed who she was friends with, who made her laugh, who made her frown. When they shared classes, Maggie noticed how Alex interacted with the teachers, who she just put her head down and obeyed (Dahrk), who she joked around with (Coulson), and who she clearly respected (J'onnz, M'orzz, In-Ze).

You could tell a lot about a person from stuff like that.

But she had also noted the books in Alex's bag. When she took out Care of Magical Creatures, and she had to rearrange the bag to fit The Art of War. When she took out Von Clausewitz and put it back to grab Newt Scamander.

Things like that.

So when Maggie looked down from her perch above the stands as the Slytherins conferred on the ground, and she saw Alex raise her want to emit red sparks, she thought, "Oh, that's a bad sign."

And when, not a moment later, the stands erupted in wands emitting red sparks, she thought, "Well, it might be a bad sign for Max, but I think it's going to be a good sign for us. Oh, Alex, you're fun!"

//

Minerva McGonnigle was no idiot and she was also no spring chicken. She sat not far from the announcer, as she always had, but she also watched the faculty for the same potential signs of insubordination that she eyed the students for. She remembered Potter and his friends, but she also remembered their teachers. As the Muggle Parliament Members sometimes said, mistakes were made.

So when the Hufflepuffs started leading and the Slytherins took a brief time-out, that was just Quidditch and she didn't think anything of it.

But when a student sent red sparks out of a wand--the classic sign of danger in the wizarding world--she immediately turned to the professors sitting next to her, Coulson and In-Ze. "Who was that? Could you see?" And they said, "Danvers, I think" and "Alex Danvers."

"Oh dear," said the Headmistress, and she rolled that r.

Then the other red sparks went off. She let out a deep sigh and turned to Coulson and In-Ze. "Operation Severus. Pass it on."

//

Max called for the time-out and dove toward the ground, landing first and waiting for the rest of his teammates. Their Keeper knew to fly down last, as if he hadn't heard, to give them all an extra few seconds to get their wind back. When he landed last, they turned toward Max. 

"Is this it?" they asked.

"It is," he said. "Salazar!"

With a whoop, they sent their brooms back up into the sky.

The game started again and the Slytherin Beaters were the first to start flying a little faster, chasing after the Bludgers and smacking them toward the Hufflepuff players with considerable glee. The goal was not necessarily points so much as damage. If they managed to incapacitate a player, there were no replacement players. Once they successfully eliminated Nancy Flannigan, part two began, when the Chasers started to speed up, leading the Hufflepuff Chasers on a wild goose chase, and gaining thirty points. Now they were only thirty points behind.

The Beaters sped past the other team, leaving them twisting in the wind to get hit by the Bludgers. Vaguely, Max thought he heard "Wingardium Leviosa!" and "Levicorpus!" and the Hufflepuff Chaser floated to the ground bleeding but not seriously.

He raced by the stands, flying low, smelled smoke nearby and heard, "Aguamenti!"

And he didn't think much about it, he really didn't, until he realized that his uniform and his broom were both on fire, and that he was speeding to the ground, soaking wet.

//

Alex waited until Max was close to the ground before hitting him with Relashio and forcing him to release the hold on his burning broom, for his own sake, much to her own disgust.

All over the stadium, voices were crying out, "Protego!" "Levicorpus!" "Wingardium Leviosa!"

And finally, over the loudspeaker, the Headmistress's Scots burr shouting, "Protego Totalum!"

And that was when Alex knew it was safe to lower her wand and lower her sweat-soaked body to the ground.


	10. Oh, This Cohort! Plan B...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now we are finally getting to the plot..

Just before Minerva had cast that last spell, Kara Danvers had gone diving to the ground on her broom. By the time the protection spell took effect, Kara Danvers was coughing up the Golden Snitch and all Minerva could do was try not to laugh and remember where she had seen that one before.

So Hufflepuff won by 190 points. But both teams were in a world of hurt in the Infirmary and Max Lord might have ended up in St. Mungo's if it hadn't been for the quick thinking of Alex Danvers. The irony of that wasn't lost on anybody.

What was left of the Slytherin brooms had been gathered by Professors In-Ze and Queen, and their preliminary finding was that the brooms had been tampered with in a fairly ingenious way that the referees should have caught but hadn't.

And that gave Minerva pause for thought. She asked Professor Flitwick to join her in her study.

The gnome levitated up to the armchair and settled in for comfort. Minerva poured him a glass of port. They were old friends, some of the last of the old guard from before the Battle of Hogwarts. She relied on her Assistant Headmaster for his judgment and skill with charms.

"Have you looked at the pieces?"

"I have. Quite impressive, and disturbing. And inspiring in a way. Why don't we have a Magical Ethics course? I am beginning to think we really need one."

Minerva made a note. "Go on." 

"The post-Potter generation. They're even more likely to experiment than ours was. They've gone far beyond the Marauders' Map or slicing their Quidditch rivals open. They are already trying to conjure or charm or hex an object, and that is not teenage magic. But these Slytherins... they almost succeeded." 

"Or, you could say that they did succeed, just very badly..."

"No," said Flitwick with some force. He took another appreciative sip of his port. "Remember those conversations we used to have in Hogsmead senior year? Albus would always argue for history always snapping back whatever we did to it? And you argued that the world was made up of both good and bad and we always had to keep fighting?"

"Yes, and Arthur Goodvale always argued that the good would always be called upon to fight the evil in time, that there was another force working in our interest."

"He was one of the first to be taken back then. Lord V couldn't abide optimists..."

They both toasted their friend's memory silently.

Flitwick continued, "But he wasn't wrong. What the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws managed was... remarkable. We didn't teach them that. I mean, yes, Astra taught them how to do the spells, but she didn't teach them the instinct to know when they would be necessary."

"That can't be taught," said Minerva.

"Maybe not. Doesn't mean it can't be learned. Or... harnessed? I feel like this generation is just waiting to be called to be heroes."

Minerva poured him more port. "Interesting. What do you suggest?" And a glance at her walls told her that the apparently sleeping former Headmasters and -mistresses of Hogwarts were all leaning a bit closer in their portrait frames to hear more too.

//

That evening, on their way to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Alex's friends all gathered under the hourglasses that held the points for the four houses. Aside from Hufflepuff's Quidditch win, nothing had yet changed. Oddly, the houses were all within maybe twenty points of each other, with Gryffindor just barely in the lead and Hufflepuff just behind.

Alex turned to James, Winn, Sara, FitzSimmons, Ava and Lucy. "We who are about to die salute you."

Lucy asked, "How are Kara and Maggie? How is Jess? Are they going to be okay for the feast?"

Sara said, "We think so. The only people who were seriously hurt were two of Max's friends, who were flying too high for our protective spells to reach them when their brooms started burning."

Simmons turned to Fitz, "So do we know how to extend the range of a spell? Is that a thing we can learn?"

Ava intervened. "Focus, people. There is going to be pain spread around tonight amidst the pumpkin juice and celebrating ghosts. We can think about strategic educational initiatives tomorrow."

//

Maggie woke up in the infirmary and lay there for a while trying to put together what had happened during her last few moments of consciousness.

The red sparks. Okay, yes. And then Maggie had done some defensive flying, as her auror aunt had taught her. And when Max's broom caught fire, she sent a spray of water at it, but then Jess had ridden into her, having been hit by a Bludger. And then someone had grabbed a handful of the back of Maggie's uniform, just as one of the Slytherin Chasers had smashed into them and the next thing she knew, she was hanging in the air, watching her broom falling a long way to the ground.

Then there was a rush of wind and she looked up to see Kara set her and Jess down on the pitch, and pry the terrified Slytherin's hands off her own uniform and gently set him down. Between her teeth, she had a long piece of wood, the last bit of her broom. She spat it into her hands and looked at it sadly.

Maggie's voice was shaky. "That's... that was some broom!"

Kara nodded. "Alex always says that the first rule of Quidditch is to never let go of your broom."

Maggie lay in the infirmary, feeling the smoke dribbling out of her ears and realized that somebody had given her some Pepperup Potion. And she felt much better, truly, but she couldn't shake the feeling that a foot-long piece of wood shouldn't have been able to keep one person safely in the air, much less four....

Kara and Alex were murmuring outside the curtains around her bed. "Um, guys?" she said. "Did I miss the feast?" She sat up and pulled back the curtains.

"It's in an hour," said Kara. "And, oh, they're kicking us out!"

"Hey, Kara. Thanks for saving me, saving us." Maggie saw the worried look on Alex's face and added. "Sorry your broom broke when we all landed on the ground."

Kara looked confused, but Alex looked grateful. Maggie added, "And don't think I don't know what you did for us, Alex."

And badass Alex Danvers blushed as they hurried away.

//

At the end of the feast in the Great Hall, Professor McGonnigle stood and gestured for silence. She said, "Today's events have changed the standing of the House Points. For Slytherin House, for attempting to cheat at Quidditch with conjured brooms and thereby putting both themselves and others in physical danger, a reduction of fifty points and suspension of the team for three games."

The Slytherins groaned. The other houses cheered.

"For the thirty-three Ravenclaws who used defensive charms to protect both of the teams, twenty points."

The Ravenclaws cheered, along with the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs.

"For the Gryffindors." She paused and the hall got very quiet. "For planning, on quite short notice, a strategy to protect their fellow students from their fellow students; for training, with little time, their housemates in defensive spells; and for largely pulling off a remarkable defensive effort, thirty points."

And Alex, sitting between Vasquez and James, muttered, "Only thirty?"

"And for Hufflepuff, for Kara Danvers risking her life to save four students, three Hufflepuffs and a Slytherin, even though her broom was down to its very last magic, five points."

That put Hufflepuff in first place and Slytherin in last place. After the cheering died down, Minerva raised her hands again, and then, feeling a bit weak, pointed her wand at her throat and spoke again, and this time her voice was magically amplified to be heard over the students' murmuring.

She said, "Given the interest, however inefficient, in applying magic to physical objects, we have devised a contest, to take place during the second semester. Each house will propose projects, an object to be conjured or magicked for a particular purpose. At the end of the semester, the Minister of Magic has agreed to come to Hogwarts to judge the contestants' projects on creativity, effectiveness, and original use of magic. The House that wins will also gain one hundred extra points."

The cheering went on for a while. Finally Minerva waved for silence again. "We will begin right after first semester finals with a school-wide lecture on the art and craft of charming objects. Proposals from each House will be due soon thereafter, before the winter break."


	11. Where to Begin?

Pretty much all the students could talk about the next day was the contest. What sort of object they should apply magic to and what they should try to make it do were the two biggest questions. Alex insisted that the Houses should try to make an object that would honor their founders, and many students agreed. Winn grumbled about this. Obviously, Gryffindors and Slytherins would do something weaponish. Ravenclaws would probably conjure a book that predicted books that hadn't been written yet. But what on Earth could Hufflepuffs do? Kindness and loyalty weren't things you could build an app for, much less a magicked object.

A few days later, a dozen gryphons came from Flourish and Botts with Hazel P. Ripplefeather's seminal book, Cabinet of Curiosities: On Conjuring Objects for Good and Ill, A History, for all the students. Apparently the Hogwarts Alumni Association had chipped in. They had two weeks to read the 593-page book before Professor Flitwick's all-school lecture that took place over six nights after dinner in the great hall.

He covered a range of topics:

* Form Factors: What You Start with Influences What You Get

* Additives: You Can't Add Shoelaces to a Train

* Process: Stirring Counterclockwise Can Be Counterproductive

* User Interface: Making Your Object User-Friendly (guest lecturer from Silicon Valley)

* Magic What You Love: Strong Magic Derives from Strong Love

* Teamwork: Magic Is Only As Strong As the Team Who Wields It

They filled the Great Hall with desks, the way they did for final exams, and every student brought loads of parchment and green ink. At the end of every evening, the students gathered up their notes and trudged back to their quarters with aching hands.

On the last evening, Minerva stood next to a tired Flitwick, squeezing his shoulder. She said, "Well, that was fascinating! It's given me some ideas too.... The spring semester should be... very interesting. What's wrong, friend?"

Professor Flitwick sighed. "I just remember what our Potions Master used to say back when we were in school: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, duck for the blast."

//

When they got back to their common room, the Ravenclaws were all talking a mile a minute. They had all agreed after the first lecture that the form factor would have to be a book. The questions were what were they going to try to make it do and how could they possibly do it?

Fitz suggested, "A self-editing spellbook."

Simmons shook her head. "Those are already in the works at Henry Wilson-Wilson, Ltd."

Ava was digging through her parchments to find something. "I know what I wish I had: a spellbook that could just transfer the spell into my head. You read it, you got it. But that's hardly original."

She glanced up to see her housemates staring at her. 

"What?"

"You. Are. A. Genius."

//

Max Lord sat brooding in the Slytherin common room. The whole thing was entirely unfair. Okay, yes, so maybe his enchantment of the brooms had not accounted for the friction involved in flying that much faster, but still, it had basically worked. And what was cheating but winning by another means? They were still the better team. And now everybody would be enchanting objects, so clearly it had been a good idea, if even the teachers were on board.

Leslie Willis walked in and dropped a pile of library books on the table. "Hey, Cracker Smax, whatcha doing? Honing your brooding skills?"

He grunted in reply.

She laughed at him. "Smax, you need to be more proactive. I've been spying on the other houses. Apparently the Ravenclaws are trying to enchant a spellbook to put its spells into the reader's head."

"That's high-level magic," said Max. "There's no way that will succeed."

"Exactly. So I say we focus on Gryffindor. They're the real obstacle."

Max stared at her, a smile growing on his face. "Obstacle. Leslie, you're a genius." He ran out the door.

"Wait? What did I say?"

//

Kara was digging through her bookbag, hoping that one of the snacks she had nicked at dinnertime would still be there, wrapped in a convenient napkin, but yeah no. Sigh.

Winn looked over at her. "What's wrong?"

"I thought I had a biscuit left over from dinner but it's not here."

Winn dug through his own bag and came up with bruised apple. "Hmph. I must have sat on my bag during Care of Magical Creatures. We could go down to the kitchens..."

Maggie looked over at them. "You know," she said, "if the teachers find out about you guys constantly going down there, we're all going to get in trouble."

"No, we're not," said Kara. "I have special permission from the Headmistress. I need to consume like 10,000 calories a day. I have the note up in my room."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you can bring people."

"Actually, I asked about that. She said bringing a friend or two was okay, but not to have parties." She rolled her eyes. "Like I would do that."

Maggie closed her book. "Fine, then I'm coming too. I like the House Elves."

They made their way down the hall and through the secret door marked by a painting of a wedding cake. Thankfully, the bride and groom on top had gone off to another painting to neck. That sort of thing could totally put a person off their appetite, which was probably the reason for putting that particular painting there in the first place.

Kara knocked politely and then stepped into the kitchen with her two friends behind her. Selby, the night cook, grinned to see her and turned to Quaff with an open hand out. Quaff rolled his eyes and handed her a copper piece.

Kara shook her head. "Selby, you're betting on me?"

Selby shrugged. "Selby is making soup and Quaff does not believe that Kara will be coming down for soup."

"Are there dumplings?" Kara's eyes shone.

Selby laughed. "Selby knows Kara." She turned to Winn and Maggie. "And what can Selby be getting for the friends of Kara?"

Maggie said, "Er, just a cup of tea, thanks. I just came to keep her company."

Winn asked shyly, "Do you have any more of those oatmeal cookies with the walnuts?"

Quaff grinned. "Winn likes Quaff's cookies? Everyone says, walnuts not to go into oatmeal cookies..."

"It's extra protein. I'm a growing boy!"

The House Elves brought tea and cookies and a huge steaming bowl of soup for Kara, then they went back to the other side of the kitchen, where they were playing Muggle card games.

Kara happily ate the dumpling soup, while the others watched. As she got to the end of the bowl, she looked sad, but then she said, "Wouldn't it be cool if you could make a spoon that multiplied food?"

Winn said, "There already is a multiplying charm, that one that they use at Gringotts to confuse thieves."

"That's goblin magic." Maggie shook her head. "Humans don't really have one like that, I'm pretty sure. And I don't think that would work with food anyway. Most multiplying charms are either illusions or they have physical limits, and every multiplication has less of the original mass. With food I'd think that would take away nutritional content."

Winn looked at Maggie with respect. "Did you learn that in Charms this year?"

Maggie shrugged. "My aunt's an auror. She talks about this stuff all the time. Wizards have tried to replicate the crown jewels, money, works of art. The Ministry of Magic keeps an eye on those kinds of charms."

Kara contemplated her spoon. "Still... there's a reason that the Tick's battle cry is 'Spoon!'"

"The Tick?" asked Winn and Maggie.

"An American cartoon superhero. My sister's Muggle friends are total nerds. Anyway, I still think a spoon is our object. Think about it. It's about nourishment. It's not sharp. It's a friendly object."

"And there's spooning..." said Maggie with a smile.

The two younger kids looked at her curiously.

"Never mind," she said. "Well, let's think about it. We can talk to Jess and Lena tomorrow. I mean, if you guys want to be a team for our House..."

"Of course!" said Kara, hugging Maggie. "And you're right. Jess and Lena are really smart, and they work so well together. It's like they share a brain sometimes."

Maggie grinned. "And you would just loooove to hang around with Lena more, wouldn't you, Kara?"

"It's just that she's so nice, and so sweet, and she's always talking about growing up and maybe making a potion company or something that's not like what her parents and brother do... She wants to make the world better."

Winn said, "Somebody's got a cruuuuush!"

Kara hit him on the arm, lightly. "No, I don't! I just like her. Like a friend."

Maggie finished her tea and helped the others bring the empty dishes over to the sink, much to the House Elves' chagrin. Selby and Quaff waved them goodbye.

//

Alex sat on Lucy's bed, flipping through the book on charming objects. "It's all been done before."

Lucy was sitting on the floor, knitting a cranberry sweater. "Sure, but what they're not putting in the book was how it was done. So even if we don't make something 100% original, if we can make an object do what we want, I doubt they're going to dock points because it's been done before. Maybe we'll figure out a way to do it better."

Vasquez was lying on her bed, scribbling in her notebook. "How about charming Professor Queen's arrows to return to his quiver? That would be helpful, wouldn't it?"

"Depends," said Lucy. "Do you mean just the arrows that miss or the arrows that hit things too? Because that would probably be harder."

"And messier," said Alex, making a face.

Lucy said, "James suggested we could try to make something defensive, like a better Quidditch uniform, one that blocks Bludgers."

Alex looked up from her book. "That's actually not a bad idea... but don't the National Teams already have something like that?"

Vasquez shook her head. "They've tried it but it's never really worked. Either it made the uniforms too heavy, or it only absorbed one blow, or that thing that happens with Muggle bulletproof vests, where you don't get killed but you do get some internal damage."

"You read about Muggle cops?" asked Lucy.

"Maggie's aunt is an auror. She liaises with the Muggles. She actually has one of those vests. Last summer, I was visiting Maggie when those Muggles tried to steal from the Ministry of Magic's museum, and she got shot. I saw the bruises. Not fun."

"Why didn't she just do Protego?" asked Lucy.

"She had chased them outside and there were Muggles everywhere. And she can do some spells silently, but not that one."

Lucy whistled. "I really have to meet this woman. She sounds badass."

Vasquez nodded seriously. "She really is."

Alex said, "Guys, we have two days to figure this out and give our House Head the proposal, so he can approve it."

"I heard that a lot of the teams from all the houses have already submitted theirs," said Lucy.

"Excellence takes time," said Vasquez reasonably. "I say let's go with the Quidditch uniform. It's more physics based, and physical magic is what our team is best at."

"Who's going to write it up?" asked Alex.

Lucy stood up, grinning. "Well, after all. It was James's idea..."

They all high-fived.


	12. The Mirror of Erised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by piecesofmyheart

When the owls came to the table the next morning, Gertrude dropped an ordinary letter into Alex's pumpkin juice and allowed herself to be fed a part of a waffle before going back to the Owlery to rest.

Alex cut the letter open with her knife, getting butter on the paper, but at least Eliza's handwriting looked happy. She tended to press the pen down harder when she was upset.

Dearest Alex,

Good news, bad news. Your father and I have been invited by the American Ministry of Magic to receive an award for our work on magical uses of moon rock, and to give a talk to the professors at Ilvermorny on accommodating alien students. Two separate invitations, but they're both around Christmas. I know that you and Kara have been planning to get together with your friends around Christmas, and I have missed you both so much, but these are great opportunities and your father and I think we should go.

Unfortunately, that means that you two will have to stay up at the school for Christmas. I want your opinion. Do you think that Kara will be too disappointed if she can't come home? The last thing she needs in her first year is for her abandonment issues to come up. Let me know what you think.

All my love, Mom

Alex's face fell. Vasquez, sitting next to her, said quietly, "Not good?"

Alex handed her the letter. Vasquez read it frowning, but then she stared off into space. "You know... I've always wanted to stay up here for Christmas at least once. We'd have the run of the castle and no inconvenient cousins."

"You have inconvenient cousins?" asked Alex.

"I thought everybody did. You know, squibs who are jealous but who you have to be nice to, even when they take your stuff..."

"But it would just be the three of us."

"Probably not. Maggie usually stays, along with Lena and Winn. And if they stay, Jess will probably stay. And I heard Lucy and James talking about staying to get a start on our project."

Alex snorted. "Yeah, I am sure that is exactly why those two want to stay."

They glanced down the long table, where the two were making heart eyes at each other.

Vasquez said, "Well, I didn't say it was going to be perfect. But I bet if you frame this right to your sister, she'll be thrilled to stay."

"Hmm. Thanks, Vasquez. This is really helpful. And you're right. It could be a lot of fun."

Vasquez salaamed. "I live to serve."

//

Professor Queen was limping around Hagrid's shack, hanging small bags of herbs around the garden fence when James and Lucy brought him the parchment with their team's proposal. They watched as he read it through, nodding in places, frowning in others. 

"Well, it's ambitious, kids, I'll give you that. What concerns me most is your testing process. That could be dangerous."

James was way ahead of him. "We weren't going to try wearing it until we could prove that it could repel things we throw at it, like maybe dropping rocks on it from the castle wall."

"Good plan. All right. You have my approval. Let me know if I can help."

"Are you even allowed to help?" asked Lucy.

"Not in a direct way. But if you need a book from the restricted section of the library, say, or an unusual spell ingredient, I may be able to help. You'll just need good reasons for wanting those things."

"Oh, well, that's great then. Thank you, sir."

//

The day the train pulled out of Hogwarts Station, it was snowing, so after they waved goodbye and wished Happy Holidays to their departing friends. The Gryffindors and Ravenclaws had the mother of all snowball fights, and then everyone repaired to the Hufflepuff common room for hot cocoa.

As Vasquez had predicted, Kara was thrilled to spend their vacation with her new friends, and hung onto every word Lena said about trying to use quantum entanglement on their object. Ava sat nearby, listening thoughtfully. 

She turned to Vasquez, saying quietly, "You know she should have been in our house."

Vasquez nodded. "Or ours. Sure. Lena is all the things."

"Does Kara know that Lena is turning her into a lesbian?"

Vasquez smiled. "She'll figure it out eventually. We did."

"You don't think Alex will kill Lena when she figures it out?"

Vasquez's smile faltered. "She'd better not. You think?"

"I can't decide whether she will totally freak or whether that will finally make her notice Maggie Sawyer."

"Wait, what? Maggie?"

"She's been crushing on Alex since third year. I thought everybody knew that."

"Well, I didn't know."

"In Ravenclaw, there's a pool going."

Vasquez's heart sank.

"Wait, Sue, are you-- Do you have a crush on Alex?"

"Shut up! Never mind. It's not important. I have to go to the library!" And she hurried out of the Hufflepuff common room, but she just didn't have the heart to go to the library, so she wandered off instead to the Weasley Memorial Swamp and listened to the crickets and the frogs.

Suddenly the sounds stopped. Vasquez looked around and then heard a loud thump. There was a flash of white, and Kara's cat Krypto strode out of the swamp with a dead frog in his mouth, looking proud of himself. Vasquez already felt sick to her stomach, but she wasn't going to chase the cat and try to get the frog away from him. Kara was just going to have to find a frog on her bed. Vasquez sighed, feeling a little bit that way herself.

//

When Sara saw the book on Magical Forces: Their Uses and Misuses in the library, she told herself that this would be very helpful for the Gryffindor project, but when she saw Ava Sharpe reaching for it at the same time, something came over her, a squishy feeling she wasn't entirely used to.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Ava. "Did you want that book too?"

"Uh, I, um, no, that's fine. You can have it."

"Maybe we could look at it together? If you come down to our common room, we have cocoa with peppermint sticks to stir with..."

"Yeah, that sounds. I, sure." Oh, Sara, she thought to herself. You have all the chill of a pile of mashed potatoes.

But she followed Ava down and they found FitzSimmons arguing. "Fitz, it's just too complicated. We need to start with a simpler form if we're going to get the hang of this."

"Jemma, it's not about the form. It's about the dispersal technique--"

He stopped short when he saw Sara. "Ava, you're bringing Gryffindors here when we're working on our project?"

Sara waved her hand. "Everybody knows you guys are trying to charm a book to put spells in the reader's head. Great idea, by the way."

Ava blushed. "It just seemed necessary."

"Well, I for one would like a book like that," said Sara, liking the way Ava looked at her. She turned and put her hands on her hips. "Can I help?"

"Are we allowed to help each other?" asked Jemma.

"There's nothing against it in the rules they posted. What are you using to disseminate?"

"Well, it's got to be in the ink, doesn't it?" said Fitz.

"Okay, so ink. Maybe grind up a sponge into it, so you get the principal of absorption, since you're trying to get the reader's mind to absorb the spell."

"That's just ridiculous," said Fitz.

"No," said Ava. "It's like what Flitwick said, how some of magic is chemistry and some of it is metaphor. We've been thinking about this all wrong, or maybe just half wrong."

Sara added, "One of the things I've noticed in Potions class is that good magic often has a sense of humor or a pun in it."

Ava gave Sara a long look. "And here I thought the Gryffindors were brute-force thinkers."

"Nah, that's the Slytherettes. We're more about chivalry." She gave Ava a wink, waved at the others and walked out.

In the hallway, she fanned herself. "Okay, Lance," she muttered. "Maybe a tiny bit more chill than mashed potatoes..."

//

That night, Kara walked into her room to find a very dead frog on her bed and Krypto looking very proud. She couldn't help it. She screamed. Krypto bolted out the door. Maggie, Lena and Jess came running in. Lena looked like she wanted to barf, but Maggie simply picked up a piece of parchment and prodded the frog onto the parchment and took it out. They went out to the common room to look for Krypto but Winn was standing there at the door looking shocked. 

"Was that your cat? I might have let him get past me as I came back in..."

"I'm going to get in so much trouble if the teachers catch him wandering around the castle," moaned Kara. "Especially if he poops in one of the classrooms or--"

But Lena said, "We'll go get him. Come on."

Jess said, "But we're not supposed to be up at this hour."

Lena said, "Doesn't matter. If Krypto sees one of the ghosts, he might get scared, and cats don't think too clearly when they're scared. With the way the stairs move...."

And Kara felt like she was going to cry, but Lena's jaw was set, so they all turned and followed her out.

They crept through the dark corridors, calling out in stage whispers, "Krypto... come on, boy. Krypto..."

But he wasn't in the trophy room or any of the classrooms. Finally Winn snapped his fingers and they went to the Room of Requirement. Just as the door opened, they heard voices, and they hurried into the room.

"I know it's here somewhere." (Was that Professor Dahrk?)

"I still think the usual way is best..." (Was that Professor Queen?)

They passed.

The five friends closed the door completely and looked around the room. There was a tall dusty mirror standing only a few feet away from a sleeping white cat.

"Krypto!" said Kara happily, stepping forward to pick him up. She glanced in the mirror and had a moment of dislocation, because she could see herself with her cat in her arms, but she could not see her friends behind her. Instead, she saw her families, both the Zor-Els (living and dead) and the Danvers. They were waving to her. And on a table in front of her was an enormous bowl full of potstickers.

"What the...?"

Maggie and Winn stepped forward, looked into mirror, and gasped. Lena and Jess stepped forward together. Lena sighed deeply. "I've read about this. The Mirror of Erised. It shows you your deepest desire. We should go. It's dangerous."

Kara wanted to ask why it was dangerous, but the looks on her friends' faces told her that maybe humans shouldn't see their desires. She wondered what Krypto had seen.

They hurried back to their House and went to bed. Just as she was falling asleep, Kara thought she heard Maggie, tough-as-nails Maggie, crying softly.


	13. The Next Chapter

Lena was never a particularly boisterous person, but after the holidays were over, she found herself feeling subdued. About the only person whose consistent company she could take was Jess, who knew exactly why Lena was down in the dumps and didn't judge her for it or try to cheer her up.

The Mirror of Erised had not shown Lena anything that surprised her. A loving family and the Nobel Prize had been her deepest desires for years. But she wondered about Winn and Maggie, who also seemed troubled these days. In contrast, Kara seemed just as cheerful as she always did, but then from what Lena had been able to see of Alex this last year and a half, the Danvers were a loving family, if a bit strict. So probably Kara wasn't devastated by the impossibility of getting what she most wanted in life.

Lucky her.

Lena was just sitting down in Herbology, expecting as usual to work alone, since the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw double class was an odd number of students. But then Ava Sharpe had come over and nodded at the stool next to Lena's. Lena nodded back, curious. She expected that Ava's Ravenclaw team probably wanted her help with enchanting their object. She wasn't surprised. The level of magic that rumor said they were attempting was way past even seventh years. And in fact apparently one of the Ravenclaw seventh-year teams was attempting something much simpler, a headband with a memory charm.

But when Ava unrolled her parchment and unstoppered her green ink, what she said to Lena was, "So, um, the GSA might be adding some members soon... At least, that's what people are saying..."

Lena was surprised by the reference. Hogwarts was fairly open these days, but even so, the Gay Students Association kept its doings quiet by habit.

"Really?" she said. As the vice president, she felt like she should have known about this sooner. "Who?"

"Um, maybe the Danvers sisters..."

Lena's heart did a backflip. "Wait, what?"

Ava nodded. "My House has been taking bets on the Alex and Maggie thing for months. But I thought you should know... And Kara..."

Lena thought about Kara. Who would she...? Jess was straight; an ally, but straight. Lucy was straight. All of their friends were.... "Wait, Sara?"

"Oh, I certainly hope not!"

"Sorry, but she's the only gay girl I can think of?"

"The only one? Seriously, Luthor?"

"Vasquez isn't Kara's type. Or possibly vice versa."

"Yeah, not Vasquez. Although apparently Vasquez has heart eyes for Alex..."

Lena stared at Ava. "Oh, yeah, I can see that."

"But apparently Alex can't."

"Poor Vasquez."

"I know, right? But I was in the library the other day and Kara was sitting there with a thesaurus, looking up synonyms for 'green.'"

"Green? Wait, do you think that has something to do with the object they're trying to charm? Because I heard it was a fork. What would they want with a green fork? Unless it's to test whether food has gone bad? Actually, that might have some potential on the market..."

Ava shook her head, sighing. "No, Lena. Somehow I would imagine it would have much more to do with green things that Kara has a more personal relationship to...."

"Oh, yes, of course. Herbology!"

"Right," said Ava, despairing of yet another oblivious lesbian.

//

Professor M'gann had been impressed by this generation of students, and even more by the last two years of students, who seemed eager to learn. She knew that their parents, aunts and uncles had been in or adjacent to the Battle of Hogwarts. Many of the kids talked of becoming Aurors one day. She used that to her advantage.

"Okay, listen up! Today's exercise is in changing appearances while maintaining essences. This is the heart of transfiguration, particularly as it is often used by Aurors and other Ministry employees." She watched as backs straightened. She saw Danvers and Vasquez side by side scribbling madly, while other students just watched her slack-jawed.

Sighing, she said, "The directions are on the board." She waved her wand at the board and they were. "The goal is to turn a hawk into a handsaw. Each table gets one hawk in a cage, thanks to Professor Queen's expertise in catching wildlife. Good luck."

To her surprise, it was Alex Danvers who raised her hand. "Ma'am? What if we accidentally kill the hawk? That doesn't seem fair to the hawks or to us. Should we even be doing animate to inanimate transfiguration in only year five?"

Her classmates tried to shush her. M'gann said, "You raise an interesting point, Danvers. I also have some hams in the refrigerated section of the lab. Anyone who would like to go slower, post-animate to inanimate, are free to make that exchange."

And most of the students mocked Alex, but Vasquez, Sara and Ava went to get hams for their pairs. M'gann hid her smile. She couldn't let the rest of the two classes know that this was the very point of the exercise: pushing against impossible standards in order to succeed.

She made a mental note to put money in Queen's pool. She was totally going to bet on these two teams: one Gryffindor and one Ravenclaw. They showed some serious potential.

//

When the sisters came to the Owlery with their letters home, Gertrude had extended one leg to Alex and then the other leg to Kara. They had petted her and fed her some day-old biscuits and then she had bowed to them both and flown off south to London.

She enjoyed the long flights, broken up by sleep in the trees of the Forest of Dean. It gave her plenty of time to think about the things she saw at Hogwarts. Apparently Krypto was being an utter ass, but what could one expect from a feline? Meanwhile, at least the girls were toeing the line, so there had not been any more red envelopes lately, thank Athena.

And when she landed in the little rowhouse just outside London, tired but satisfied, Eliza and Jeremiah had given her owltreats and told her what a good girl she was, how happy they were to get word from their girls.

Which was as it should be, Gertrude thought.

And when Eliza and Jeremiah read the letters and traded them and didn't yell?

Gertrude thought, well, finally the girls had learned how to communicate with their parents.

//

Max walked into the common room and bent down and picked up the little rubber doorstop that they almost never used. "Huh," he said to himself.

He ambled over to a chair by the fire and pulled a notebook out of his bag, set the doorstop on the table, and started to sketch and take notes.

He paused and stretched, then went into his bag again and pulled out a book, its title printed in large gold letters on the front, Preventative Hexes: A Compendium.

From the dark corner where she had sat dozing, Leslie Willis watched him, and she thought very hard about what he had said the last time they had talked. Because Leslie Willis was competitive, yes, and ambitious, yes.

But she was absolutely not the total little shit that Max Lord was.

//

The following Saturday was a Quidditch game, Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw. Alex, their premier Beater, listened to their seventh-year Captain, Emily, give the motivational talk, thinking how she would do it better next year. But she listened to Emily's description of the tactics they should take and she agreed. With the Ravenclaws, they had to take the offensive.

When she took to the sky, she felt the freedom that she always did on a broom. Up here, she was in charge, no one else. Up here, she was fast, she was wind. And when the Bludgers came out, she was force. She was (fucking) physics on a broom. (Okay, Eliza Danvers insisted on politeness and Alex had a hard time letting that go...)

As the two teams were slowly getting up to speed, she let her mind drift just a bit, to a conversation in the Gryffindor common room, when their object team had stayed up late, until all their other housemates had gone to bed, and they had huddled by the fire talking strategy. Sara had been talking about metaphors and puns, James had talked about chemistry, but Vasquez, half asleep had talked about the eight forces of magical physics: expansion, contraction, deflection, multiplication, erasure, reflection, severing, conjoining...

The referees blew their whistles and the game began. She set aside her ideas about how to make a better Quidditch uniform and set her mind to not getting hit by Bludgers. She always felt just a little bit guilty, sending Bludgers to hit her classmates, especially when they were Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs, but her deep-seated competitiveness overcame the guilt every time. And she was good enough that she never hit anybody to the head or central mass. She had worked hard only to clip them, enough to knock them astray, knock them off their brooms.

And her teammates knew to make sure their rivals didn't hit the ground hard.

Unless, of course, they were Slytherettes, who simply had to take their chances.

Except for Leslie Willis, who everybody agreed should have been a Gryffindor and was worth defending.

Alex thought that it was just as well that Kara had been chosen for Hufflepuff, that Alex didn't have to tell her the embarrassing truth that Gryffindors were a bunch of softies.

//

Kara watched her sister clobber a Ravenclaw with a Bludger and then speed down to help make sure the girl hit the ground soft. It wasn't good Quidditching, thought Kara, but it was good humanning. Or something.

Lena, standing next to her and hugging herself against the cold, yelled, "Your sister is amazing! I don't know a single Hufflepuff who would have done that!"

"I would," said Kara, surprised.

Lena hugged her tightly. "Oh, those Danvers sisters."

Kara felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with her alien origins. She could feel herself blushing and she didn't know what to do. She wanted to hug Lena back, but she knew how that might go, and she really, really never wanted to hurt Lena, who was so good, and so pure...

Lena looked at her. "Kara, are you all right?"

"Um, yeah, of course. Just thinking Alex will get in trouble with her captain!"

"Don't worry about it. Emily got both her arms broken in her second year. She understands the value of compassion."

Kara gazed at Lena's face as the girl whooped and cheered for her sister. She couldn't help herself. She pulled Lena around and kissed her on the mouth. And then panicked.

But Lena grabbed hold of her with both arms and hugged her tightly.

And then the crowd went wild, because the Gryffindor Seeker had caught the Snitch, winning the game.


	14. The Forbidden Forest

Professor Queen was grumpy, thought Winn, so he brought him oatmeal cookies, and left them on the table in Hagrid's shed. How could anyone stay grumpy when they had cookies? Professor Queen led them to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, limping and leaning on a cane. Winn shared a glance with Kara, who also noticed the haggard appearance of their teacher, but she shrugged. How were they to figure out Queen's problem? Maybe it was just the professor being really old. After all, he had to be over thirty, right?

That was the theory. What it didn't consider was that maybe the teacher just having a really bad day, right? He was also spending more time with Professor Dahrk, and that couldn't be good now, could it?

And Sara saw Winn watching their grumpy teacher, and Winn saw the look on her face, and hurriedly dipped his pen in ink and took notes. Well, he was mostly taking notes, but he was also writing to himself: check in with K about the project, borrow that book from Ava, and remind Maggie to

He turned to see that Ava had come to sit down next to him. She was going to tease him. People always teased him about his teacher crushes.

"Hey, Winn," she whispered. "There's a meeting of a club tonight. You should come."

"What's the club?"

"It's the GSA."

"Oh! Well, that sounds good. I didn't think there'd be something like that at Hogwarts!"

He gave her a grin and she smiled back, seeming oddly relieved for some reason.

After they finished taking notes on the Hedgedogs and their ability to track wizards by smelling their magical "scent," they packed up their books and trudged back to the castle.

In the Great Hall, when Max Lord saw Winn moving toward the Hufflepuff table, talking with Kara excitedly about Professor Queen's lesson and Professor Queen, he moved in with his friends from Slytherin.

"Hey, Shortshot! So you really like our teacher the queen, don't you? Well, maybe that's because you're a queen too!"

The Slytherettes around Max laughed heartily. 

Winn blushed a deep red. "Yeah, well, your Head of House is a witch, so maybe you guys want to be a witch too, instead of wizards." It wasn't very good, but it was the best he could come up with off the cuff.

Kara stepped in front of him. "Max Lord, you're just a bully. And you need to be taken down a peg."

"Oh, yeah? By you and what army?"

Maggie jumped up from their table and ran over, but not before Alex and Vasquez got there first and inserted themselves between Kara and Max.

Alex said, "Max, if you so much as lay a finger on my sister or her friends?"

"Yeah? What are you going to do about it?"

"The next Quidditch match that Slytherin has with Gryffindor? I will put a Bludger through your tiny little head."

Professor Flitwick hurried toward the students, squeaking, "No fighting! No fighting!"

"Professor!" said Maggie, "Max was making homophobic comments at Winn! He was bullying him."

Professor Flitwick looked around. "Is this true?"

The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws nodded.

Max shrugged. "Why shouldn't I say things, if they're true? You make it sound like queers are better than Mudbloods or something."

Alex pulled back her fist, but Vasquez grabbed onto it and held her back.

"No need for that, Ms. Danvers," said Flitwick. "Detention, Mr. Lord, and minus ten points from Slytherin." He turned toward the girls. "And if I even hear about fighting, points will be deducted from the other houses as well."

There was loud muttering, and everyone went back to their House tables, but not before Winn turned to Alex and Vasquez. "Thanks, guys..."

"We have your back, Winn," said Alex. "Always. If he bothers you again..."

Vasquez nodded, frowning. "One of these days..."

Maggie mouthed "thank you" to Alex, who nodded and turned back to her table.

Winn sat down between Kara and Maggie, but his appetite was gone. 

Kara said, "Um, you know, Winn, there's a club meeting tonight..."

"Oh, yeah! I heard about that. The GSA. Cool. Wait, are you going?"

"We both are," said Maggie.

"Really? I wouldn't have taken you guys, but hey, I guess it takes all types, right?"

And they agreed that it did.

Winn managed to eat some chicken and mashed potatoes and pecan pie after all. When dinner was over, he ambled with them through the castle and Maggie got the Room of Requirement open for them. It was full of students laughing together.

Winn looked around. "What have you got? Playstation? Nintendo?"

Kara frowned. Maggie turned to look at him, tilting her head. "What?"

"The games! This is the Gaming Students Association, right?"

"Uh, yeah, no. Gay. Gay Students. Because we're gay, Winn. Aren't you?"

Winn felt the color drain from his face. Kara put her hand on his arm. "Are you okay?"

He looked around to see a lot of kids he knew, including Ava, Sara and Vasquez. "I, uh, I think I need to sit down."

Kara helped him to a chair and got him a glass of water. Ava and Sara came over, grinning. "Congratulations, Winn! We didn't think you were out yet!"

Vasquez strolled over, sans frown for a change. "Hey, Little Plaid Shirt, you made it! Good for you! Don't let those homophobic creeps like Max and his idiot friends keep you from living your life."

Winn looked up at them, feeling dazed. "Wait, you guys are all gay?"

"Queer as fuck," drawled Sara.

"Sara!" said Kara. "Language!"

"Sorry, Kara, I forgot I was around second years..."

Winn said, "I'm pretty sure I'm straight. I think Lucy and Lena are really pretty..."

"Well, they are," said Ava. "But we've all seen the way you look at James. So maybe you're just bi."

Winn drank some more water, thinking about his father in Azkaban. This was not going to make their relationship any smoother, for sure. Shakily, he said, "But James is straight..."

"Doesn't mean you are," said Ava.

Lena Luthor stalked over and said, "Well, if it isn't my Potions homework partner. Good to see you, Winn. I heard about what Max and the Slytherettes said. Don't let it get to you. You'll learn to let it roll off you. We'll help all we can."

Winn stared at all his friends smiling at him and promising their support. Tentatively, he thought about James, and how jealous--he had never used the word before, even in his head--he had always been whenever he saw Lucy together with James.

"Uh, I, wow. This is a lot to take in..."

Kara sat down next to him. "I got this, guys."

Their friends patted him on the arm and wandered away to join in other conversations.

"You're pretty, too, Kara..."

She blushed. "Thanks, Winn. I like you a lot. But Lena is..."

He sighed. "She's Lena. If I were a girl, I would totally be gay for Lena."

"I know, right?" Kara enthusiastically listed their friend's good qualities, and Winn just nodded.

Finally, he said, "The only downside is her family. Parents in Azkaban. Brother running the business from abroad to avoid the warrants for his arrest from the Ministry of Magic."

"Wait, what?"

"Yeah, the Luthors are a Pureblood family, kinda supported Lord V a few years back... You didn't know?"

"I only met her in September. It's not like we've had tons of time to talk about our families..." Kara looked sad.

"Yeah, well, at least your family was on the right side of history. Your parents were in the Order of the Phoenix, weren't they? My dad's in Azkaban too."

"Oh, Winn, I'm so sorry."

He shrugged. "He magicked some toys into bombs. So yeah, this whole enchanting objects contest has got me a little stressed out. What if I'm good at it? I don't think I want to be too good at it..."

Kara nodded. "That makes sense." She watched his face look puzzled. "Hey, Winn. This is my first meeting too. I only just figured it out at the last Quidditch game... If you want to go, if it's too much for right now? We could go."

"No," he said slowly. "Let's just stay and sit for a while. Everybody looks so happy. I always thought gay people would be sad, since they weren't like everybody else."

"Yeah," said Kara. "But they're... we're... like each other. And we're pretty okay, as it turns out."

Winn grinned at her. "You give me hope."

//

Maxwell Lord showed up at Hagrid's hut, shaking in his shoes. The terms of his detention were three hours in the Forbidden Forest with Professors Queen and Dahrk, to get potion ingredients that only bloomed around midnight. He was armed with heavy gloves and clippers from Herbology and a messenger bag slung over his shoulder to put the plant clippings into.

The moon was just past full and pulling back, and Max wondered whether that made their foray into the forest any safer. Probably not, he supposed. 

Professor Dahrk complained about the detention. "The boy will only slow us down," she said.

Queen shrugged. "That's how we learned to obey the rules. He'll figure it out."

"You know, we wouldn't have to keep doing this if you just--"

"Nora, just shut up about that, would you? This is the time-tested way."

Raising her lantern, Dahrk shrugged as they stepped carefully into the forest. "Now remember, we want wolf's bane and lannet root. Do you remember what those look like, boy?"

"Yes, Professor."

And that was how Maxwell Lord found himself crawling through the damp undergrowth, snipping away at the purple flowered plant to get the leaves as they were touched by moonlight. Sometimes he really hated magic.


	15. Back in the News

The next morning at the breakfast table, Vasquez and Alex shared the Daily Prophet, while James and Lucy snickered at Max Lord looking exhausted.

"Holy smokes!" yelled Vasquez. "Look at this!"

Alex put down the Quidditch section of the paper to look at the front page in Vasquez's hands. She read the headline out loud. "Lex Luthor Returns to Britain to Face Trial. Huh, guess he decided to stop running."

"Yeah," said Vasquez, glancing over at the Hufflepuff table. "It says his lawyers are confident that he'll be proven not guilty of colluding with Lord V's buddies. Do you think I should show this to Lena?"

"Absolutely. The sooner she knows, the more prepared she can be for the fallout."

Together they got up and went over to the Hufflepuff table, to where Kara was doing impressions of the teachers to make Lena and Winn laugh.

"Um, Lena?" said Vasquez seriously. "You might want to look at this."

And Lena turned and took the paper and her face fell and Kara jumped up, looking ready to kill, and Alex grabbed her and hugged her and said, "No, it's fine, Kara. Easy."

"So," Lena said with a flat voice. "Lex is back. Lovely."

"But that's good, right?" said Alex. "If he finally faces trial?"

Lena shook her head. "If he's found guilty, I'll have yet another family member in Azkaban. If he's found not guilty, everybody will think the justice system didn't work. Either way, I'm screwed."

Max Lord and the Slytherettes came by and snatched the paper out of her hands. Max shouted, "Well, lookee here! Lex Luthor is finally facing the music! Hey, Lena, does that mean you're next? Your whole family were Death Eaters, weren't they?"

"One or two," Lena drawled. "Something that you might want to keep in mind."

Max's friend, John Corbin sneered. "You gonna hex me, Luthor? C'mon, let's duel!" He pulled out his wand.

Calmly, Lena folded the newspaper and handed it back to Vasquez. "John, I wouldn't even have to bring my wand to a duel with you, because you'd only hex yourself."

Kara grinned, "Burn!"

John mumbled about something Lena could do to herself, but she ignored him and they finally went away.

Vasquez grumbled, "I hate bullies."

Everyone agreed.

Alex said, "Potions with Dahrk. Did everybody write their essays? Two feet of parchment about the Lycanthrope Deflector?"

Everyone groaned. Kara said, "Yeah, our year is Charms with Flitwick first. Have fun..."

"Lucky you," mumbled Alex, as she grabbed her bookbag and set off behind Vasquez.

//

The Slytherins got there first. John Corbin made a point of clearing a seat for Max next to him and some of their friends murmured, but nobody was brave enough to say anything out loud.

As they entered, they handed Professor Dahrk their rolled-up essays and she grunted, being distracted by an op-ed in the Daily Prophet that included a picture of a very bald Lex Luthor gesturing at a crowd. Alex had read the piece, which had been decidedly pro-Luthor—disconcertingly so. Alex had seen enough of Lena (and Kara’s instinctive love of her) to like her and appreciate her mind. For a second year, she was surprisingly advanced in magic. But then, no one had ever accused the Luthors of being inadequate wizards. Evil, yes. Inadequate, no.

When all the students were seated, Dahrk stood and said, “Well, you’ve written your essays on the Lycanthrope Deflector. There will be no instructions written on the board. Instead, you will gather the ingredients you need and write a detailed description of everything you do and you will hand in your write-up along with the potion you make. Begin.”

Alex was partnered with Sara, who said, “Hey, girl. This’ll be a snap. Working with you is like working with a Ravenclaw!”

Alex blushed. “Kara said she thought you were dating Ava…”

Sara shook her head. “I wish. She’s so pretty. And smart. And funny.”

Alex nodded. “And her hands. I bet she could palm a quaffle.”

Sara chopped up the wolf's bane and added it to their cauldron. “Valentine’s Day is coming up. You think if I asked her to go to Hogsmeade with me, she might say yes?”

“Of course she would.”

“I dunno… Hey, if I ask her, you have to ask Maggie.”

“Wait, what? No! Why would I do that?”

“She has a huge crush on you. Ask Kara.”

“Yeah, no. I’m not into girls. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. I think my sister’s dating Lena Luthor of all people. But yeah, no, I’m just, no.”

Sara gave her a long look. “If you say so.”

At the end, the silvery liquid in their cauldron looked like what the books they had read had said the end result should look like. At the front of the room, Max’s had a slight greenish sheen to it and Professor Dahrk gave him a quick look and picked up the parchment on his desk. “You added Lannet root? Why?”

He looked proud of himself. He said, “I read in The Slytherin’s Cure-All that Lannet root could extend the usefulness of the potion for up to six hours more.”

Dahrk nodded to herself.

Sara murmured to Alex. “You get the feeling that if we’d done that, she’d have disappeared our result?”

Alex grunted as she stoppered their vial. “In a heartbeat.”


	16. Lena’s Very Bad Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay.I got distracted by my life.

The next day started badly for Lena and only went downhill from there.

She had been dreaming at first about flying with Kara Danvers, over the green hills and valleys around Hogwarts, far over the lake and back over the Forbidden Forest, when she looked down and saw them, the Thestrels. Their skeletal wings gleamed dully in the leaf-dappled sunlight, but her stomach fell every time she saw them. It wasn’t their fault that they could only be seen by someone who had seen death. They were probably very nice creatures. But they were reminders.

Lena had been seven when it had happened. She had been hanging out in Lex’s lab at LuthorCorp, and when he got up to go to the cafeteria for dinner, she had followed behind and was traipsing along when he suddenly stopped short and hurried her into a room off the hallway, and pulled her down below the level of the door’s small window.

A man she had seen before ran down the hall and they heard the words, Avada Kedavra, and he stumbled backwards right up against the window, shuddered and disappeared.

The voice had been Lionel’s.

Lex immediately grabbed Lena and dragged her behind the desk. They heard the door open, their father’s breath ragged, and then it closed again. Then they heard the sound of a heavy weight being dragged away with difficulty. Lex had whispered, “No one can ever know we saw that! Promise me!”

And Lena had nodded vigorously, her eyes wide.

Now in her dream, she saw the Thestrels, remembered, and let go of her broom. As she fell she heard Kara screaming about Alex’s first rule, but she was falling and she was pretty sure even a witch couldn’t survive a fall like that, but she woke up with a start, heart pounding just as someone was pounding on her door, yelling that she was going to be late for breakfast. She dressed hurriedly and ran down the shifting stairways to the Great Hall, where Kara had already put together a plate of her favorite foods, including yogurt, which Kara didn’t care for.

So that was nice, but then the owls came roaring in, and her eye was caught by a large snowy white owl and she nearly dropped her pumpkin juice because it looked like the Luthor family owl, Larkspur. But it wasn’t flying toward her. It flew toward the teachers’ table and dropped a letter onto Professor Dahrk’s plate, turned and flew away. Before she could even process that, Alex and Vasquez were coming over, carrying the Daily Prophet and looking protective.

The paper was covering Lex’s trial on the front page—well, his trials actually, one in civil court and one in criminal court. The civil one was going on now, and it looked to most that he was going to win. Lena’s heart fell. She loved her brother, but the things he had done with LuthorCorp technology and its stocks really sounded to her like collusion and insider trading based on information received from the Deatheaters. Knowing the Luthor lawyers, they would get him off on some kind of technicality. She sighed. Alex squeezed her shoulder, but said nothing, turning 360 to glare at the students watching to let them know that the Gryffindor Beater would practice her Quidditch skills on them if they even said a word about it to Lena. 

Or each other. 

Or at all.

As the group was gathering up their books, Lena turned back to see Dahrk look pale as she read a creased piece of parchment. Suddenly making up her mind, Lena said to Kara and Winn, “Save me a seat in class. I have to do something.”

And she ran off before they could reply.

The Owlery was several floors higher than the Great Hall, so Lena was out of breath by the time she could hear the sleepy birds rustling as they ate their dinner and settled down to sleep…

//

Kara and Winn deposited books on the desk between them to save space for Lena, but when she still hadn’t come by the time that Professor In-Ze had finished writing on the board, they started to get nervous.

“Mr. Schott,” asked In-Ze. “Where is Ms. Luthor? Is she in the Infirmary?”

“Um, no, I think she said she needed to run to the bathroom first…”

“Five points from Hufflepuff. Not that it matters. I imagine that Ms. Luthor is familiar with the topic of today’s lesson.”

On the board, she had written The Unforgivable Curses.

“Lena’s good!” insisted Kara.

“Five more from Hufflepuff for insubordination. Lionel Luthor went to Azkaban for his use of the curses. Now, let us begin. You see in this jar, I have put three spiders…”

//

Professor Coulson enjoyed lecturing on the Founders, the discoveries that they had made and all the bits that weren’t covered in Hogwarts: A History. He was always pleased when students paid attention to more than just their own House’s Founder. Normally, the Gryffindors couldn’t be bothered to listen to him describe the self-mixing cauldron that Helga Hufflepuff had invented, and the Hufflepuffs made faces when he was talking about Salazar Slytherin. In general, the younger students had gotten better about that, but it still surprised him when Lena, Kara and Winn sat in back, passing notes while he described Helga’s lost spoon.

He wandered toward the back of the room and they caught each other’s eyes and hurriedly started scribbling on their parchments. For the rest of the class, he strolled between the rows of desks as he talked and the class paid close attention, or at least made every effort to hide their nodding off. He would take what he could get.

But after the students had hurried off to their next class, he noticed a folded piece of paper under Winn’s desk. He picked it up and unfolded it, and read:

But it wasn’t Larkspur. It was Lapiz! What is he doing writing to her???

He folded the note and put it into his pocket, and then looked at his pocket watch. He had an hour between classes and a few dozen essays to grade, but this was more important. The Headmistress needed to know what Lex Luthor was doing.

//

By the time the Ravenclaws got from all the way up in the Astronomy tower to all the way down in the Potions classroom, the Gryffindors had already taken their preferred seats and set up their cauldrons. Ava sighed. She really didn’t want to have to work with Lucy Lane. The shorter girl tended to make sly remarks about all the different girls who supposedly had crushes on Ava (and Sara Lance was never one of them). It was distracting and kept her from doing her best work.

“Ava!” came a whisper-shout. “Work with me!”

Ava’s eyes went wide. Sara was waving at her. Blushing, Ava went and joined the blonde at her chosen lab table. Sara whispered, “Hey, you. We get to work together! But where’s Professor Dahrk? Usually if she’s going to be late, she writes the assignment on the board…”

Just then Professor M’orrz hurried in, her dark robe sweeping behind her. “Transfiguration!” she growled. “That doesn’t mean I have to transfigure into every other teacher when something comes up!” She slammed her books onto the front desk, waving a piece of parchment.

Ava and Sara stared at her. Usually, she was the sweetest tempered of all of their teachers.

“All right, people, listen up. Dahr—Professor Dahrk has you doing Pepperup Potion today, and that is simply not happening. You’re fifth years and it’s high time you started learning more complex potions.” She waved her wand at the board and a recipe for potion that looked plenty complex appeared there.

FitzSimmons immediately raised their hands.

“But Professor M’orrz,” said Fitz. “A Duplication Potion has never actually—”

“—been successfully fabricated,” finished Simmons. “It’s highly theoretical, with numerous different kinds of failure modes—”

“—depending on the material it is then applied to, the thing you’re trying to duplicate.”

“Yes,” said M’orrz. “It is. So if you don’t want to blow up the lab, I would suggest that you build your potion with meticulous care and apply it to the simplest thing you can. Begin!”

Ava and Sara worked seamlessly together, much better than Lucy and James at the next lab table, who were arguing about the size of the chopped mimosa leaves and the ratio of sand to salt to water. In contrast, Ava and Sara simply split up the chores and got the work done without talking. About the only other person that Ava consistently liked working with was Alex, because she was so unrelentingly meticulous, a quality that Ava respected. But Sara was nice to work with in other ways. Whenever they came to a pause in the work or one asked the other one a question, Sara gave her a small smile. It made Ava feel… nice. Seen. And so when they finished fifteen minutes ahead of most of the other pairs, Ava looked over Sara’s shoulder at the vial with its shimmering lavender liquid, and she put her hand on Sara’s shoulder, feeling the younger girl tremble a little at the touch. But that was impossible. Sara was a Chaser and nothing made her nervous.

Sara said, “We’re early. Are you sure we didn’t skip a step? My mom was a Ravenclaw and she will not let me live it down if her Gryffindor daughter blows up the potions lab.”

Ava read through the instructions one by one. “No, we did everything right. And anyway, normally when anybody messes up a potion, it goes all murky, like we melted Berty Botts’ snot beans.”

“True.”

They headed to the front table where Professor M’orrz had scattered a few dozen simple objects for them to use to try their potion on. Sara said, “You choose.” Ava picked up a small piece of glass.

As they went back to their lab table, their friends were going and picking their objects.

“Ready?” said the professor. “Pour.”

And they were well used by fifth year to explosions and melting, the smells of sulphur and vinegar, the air turning wavy above their desks, the surfaces of the desks melting a little. Professor M’orrz didn’t roll her eyes the way Professor Dahrk sometimes did. She just made checkmarks on her scroll.

Only four teams had good(ish) results.

Lucy and James’s sponge expanded to loud cheers and then returned to its former size with a sound like a sigh.

“Not bad,” murmured M’orrz.

Alex and Vasquez’s purple quill exploded in a rain of feathers.

“Pretty good for Gryffindors,” commented M’orrz drily.

FitzSimmon’s elliptical rock swelled to a round shape of roughly the same volume.

“Huh,” said M’orrz. Then she turned to Sara and Ava.

Sara poured their liquid on the square piece of glass. Nothing happened. Students in the back of the class sniggered.

Ava looked into their vial. There was still some potion left. She poured the last drop on the piece of glass.

It cracked in half.

Professor M’orrz stared, then started to laugh. She laughed so hard her eyes were watering.

Alex said, “Professor, that’s not fair! Just because they failed doesn’t mean you should laugh at them!”

M’orrz wiped her eyes, trying to catch her breath. “Oh, but Ms. Danvers, they didn’t exactly fail. The three of you sort of succeeded, but these two? Don’t you see what happened here? Remember, magic has a sense of humor. FitzSimmons, tell me what you see here.”

Slowly Simmons said, “They had a piece of glass—”

And Fitz finished, “—and now they have two.”

“Exactly. So five points for each of the partners who sort of succeeded, so that’s twenty for Gryffindor and ten for Ravenclaw, and another twenty each for Ms. Sharpe and Ms. Lance.”

They grinned at each other happily as the professor gathered up her books and hurried out, looking more pleased than she had when she had hurried in. The other students gathered up their books and ambled off to dinner. Sara turned to Ava.

"Well, that was a stroke of luck!"

"Absolutely. I'm pretty sure we're not amazing potion makers. No offense."

"None taken. But..." Sara looked thoughtful.

"What?"

"Um, if you're having a lucky day, should you do something that you think you can't do?"

"Makes sense."

"Okay." She took a deep breath. "So, um, Valentine's Day is on Saturday this year. Would you go with me to Hogsmeade?"

Ava stared, then her face broke into a huge grin. "Absolutely!"

//

Lena was exhausted. It was one thing to throw yourself into every single class every single day, and to constantly have to catch yourself when you're daydreaming about your cute girlfriend. It was another to have to do those things while worrying constantly that your brother was going to commit another Luthoresque crime or possibly just get sent to Azkaban (it was a tossup, really). And on top of that, to have the Slytherins constantly taunting her in the halls with a song about Lena being a serial killer to the tune of some old Muggle song about a man-eater.

Exhausting.

And she was grateful to Kara and her sister, and Maggie, because they had marshaled all the second years in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff to never leave Lena's side, and once Sara had told Ava what was going on, Ava had given the second year Ravenclaws a fierce speech about the sharpness of Lena's mind and their need to protect her from the Slytherettes. So at least Lena didn't have to face the bullying alone. On her way to dinner, Lucy had been her most recent bodyguard, and when Max and John Corbin had come up behind them and yelled, "Boo!" Lucy had gone to pull out her wand and hex them, but what she had pulled out was one of her knitting needles, and John had given her the Snivelpox, and she was down in the infirmary now, covered in spots and blowing her nose constantly. Lena felt guilty. She had just been trying to help Lena and now she was in pain.

So much for the proud Luthor inheritance.


	17. Simplicity

Lucy was in the infirmary for three days. As the nurse, Madam Tenderloin had explained, it wasn't that John Corbin was a particularly gifted wizard. It was just that he was quite a vindictive young man, and that really helped with hexes. Lucy stored that piece of information away for later consideration. She tried to be a good person, but she knew she held grudges from time to time. It would be nice to be able to use her personal failings in her favor someday.

James visited her often and even once shyly brought her snowflowers from the frozen lake.

Lena visited her to thank her and brought her a stack of boxes of chocolate frogs and wouldn't say how she had gotten them from Hogsmeade. Lucy suspected Kara had helped. That girl had mad skills.

Kara visited her and told her about her most recent Care of Magical Creatures lesson. Apparently Professor Queen was looking much healthier and not using his cane as much. He had given a spirited lesson about dragons. Kara said with some surprise, "Did you know that only Chinese water dragons were known on Earth until 989? Then the first fire-breather was sighted in Northern Africa."

"Yeah, Little Danvers. Some wizards believe that the dragons were called forth from a dimension where they had been imprisoned."

Kara looked thoughtful about that.

Alex brought Lucy the homework for DADA and potions, but had already written her History of Magic essay for her and told her to just copy it down in her own handwriting. Sometimes Lucy really loved Alex.

Sara came and told Lucy excitedly about her upcoming date with Ava. 

Lucy's eyes went wide. "Wait, but you-- Last year you dated James. And before that it was, what's his name, and didn't you and Winn once--"

Sara shrugged. "I just really like people. And Ava's just...." She waved her hands helplessly.

"Oh, Lance, you've got it bad!"

"Fuck you, Lane." But she was grinning when she said it.

Vasquez came in looking mopey, which was unusual for her, as normally she had a Resting Bitch Face that could carve wood.

"What's the what, Vee?" asked Lucy.

Vasquez cracked her knuckles absently. "Apparently, Maggie from Hufflepuff has a mad crush on Alex."

Lucy's eyes narrowed. "Then she should get in line."

"What am I going to do, Lu? Maggie's so much prettier than me. All the guys are planning on asking her out for Valentine's Day..."

"Yeah, don't worry about them. Maggie's like us. You know that."

"I do. And she wants Alex, and a girl like that gets what she wants. And I get leftovers at best."

"Like who?"

"Like that girl Waverly who graduated early."

"Yeah, I never understood that one..."

"It made sense at the time. I had broken up, she had broken up..."

"Those things never work, babe."

"Apparently not."

"Have you thought about asking Alex yourself? You know she likes you."

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that it's not... like that."

"You can only ask."

"Yeah, I guess..." Vasquez sighed dejectedly. "On the upside, you no longer look like you've got the Black Death. Just a case of polka dots..."

"Fuck you, Vasquez."

"Don't you just wish."

And something fluttered inside Lucy's semi-straight brain, so she said, "Hey, how is the Quidditch armor coming along?"

"Crappily," said Vasquez succinctly. "After something Ava said about a Potions lesson, we stripped it down to just the leather part, so we weren't trying to enchant something too complex. And Alex said something about Lannet root being a kind of potion extender, but still, when we dropped rocks on it from the castle walls, it just squished like always."

"Hmm," said Lucy thoughtfully. "I've been thinking about that. Remember what you said about the principal forces of magic? What we're trying to do is a form of absorption, absorbing the force of the Bludger. But a solid material doesn't absorb force as well as a mesh."

"A mesh?"

Lucy reached over to the bedside table, where her knitting lay. The sweater's main parts were almost finished. She still had to do the collar and cuffs. But the cranberry wool yarn was in the Gryffindor colors, and Lucy's stitches were tight.

Vasquez stared. "And yarn is also a mesh, in its own way, unlike leather...."

"Yup." Lucy grinned.

They high-fived.

//

Siobhan Smythe had joined Maxwell Lord's House team and was all in. When Max had told them all what he had learned about Lannet root as a potion extender, Siobhan had given him heart eyes that he was too busy with his own self-importance to notice.

But Leslie had noticed.

John Corbin had suggested using some of the elements of the Duplication spell, and had also looked rather infatuated when Max had praised his genius. And Max hadn't noticed John's slight blush.

But Leslie had noticed.

Max turned to Leslie and sneered. "Haven't heard much from you, Willis. Thoughts?"

"Yeah, Sugar Smax. You can't hex rubber. It's a Muggle material, synthetic. I mean if we could get actual rubber from a rubber tree, sure, natural latex. But honestly, I'd use wood. Easy to carve, easy to charm."

Corbin and Smythe just rolled their eyes. "We can charm whatever we need to charm."

"So, uh, you didn't listen to one word of Flitwick's lecture on form factors, is that it? 'Cuz he was pretty clear on the purity/naturalness/simplicity vector."

Max shrugged and plopped the rubber doorstop into his cauldron, and poked the flames beneath it with his wand.

"Yeah," said Leslie. "This is going to get putrid in five, four, three, two--"

And as they all ran out of the common room coughing and gasping for breath, Leslie thought to herself, Gryffindor. Why couldn't I have been a Gryffindor?

//

Minerva McGonnagle woke up Albus Dumbledore's portrait and read him the note that Lena Luthor had passed in her History of Magic class.

"Well, now," he said, frowning. "That is untoward news. Do you think...?"

Minerva bowed her head. "It's starting again? Maybe. Lex was always an awful lot like Tom Riddle, in personality, in talent, in buried rage."

"Protect Lena!"

"I will, as you well know, protect all of them!" Minerva pinched her nose. "Sorry, Albus. I know what you mean. What have you heard at the Ministry?"

"The current Minister, Plump, as you know is a right idiot, and he has been stacking the Ministry with incompetents, halfwits, and fools, which is nothing new. But in the last few weeks, there have been sudden resignations that made no sense. I have tried getting that Auror, Elena Sandoval, to secretly test for the Imperius Curse, but she hasn't been able to get close enough."

"Yes, I read about Alphonso MacKenzie's resignation. Disturbing. Who do you think will replace him as Minister of Magical Law Enforcement?"

Albus sighed. "Well, isn't that the thousand galleon question. I am hoping it will be Sam Lane. He's strict and rigid, but not downright evil. I am worrying it might be Grant Ward."

Minerva shuddered. "He hates the Muggles."

Albus nodded sadly. "We are in for perilous times, my friend."


	18. Valentines and Charms

It took Lena a while after the attack on Lucy to get her groove back, but she was resilient, and nobody could hang around with Sunshine Danvers for very long without remembering how to smile. And on Saturday morning, eating heart-shaped waffles and raspberry cocoa in the Great Hall with the other Hufflepuffs, Lena couldn’t stop smiling. She had even worn a red dress for her date in Hogsmeade with Kara, who was planning to wear black jeans and a pink shirt with little red hearts all over it.

Lena felt a tap on her shoulder and turned, startled, to see a red-headed seventh year Hufflepuff in a red and grey plaid flannel shirt, holding a small piece of cardboard in her hand.

“Lena? Um, can you introduce me to your girlfriend?”

“Sure, um, you’re Nicole, right?”

“Yeah, I wanted to meet her sister, the Beater.”

“Oh, well, Kara isn’t down yet, but Alex is over there. I can introduce you.”

There was a shy smile. “Do you think she’d sign my Quidditch card?”

Lena carefully didn’t let her jaw drop as they turned to see Alex sitting at the table across from theirs, wearing a Quidditch jersey for the American Beater, number 20, Abby Wambach, and Nicole said, “Oh… even better. She likes Abby. That is… very good news.”

Lena opened her mouth and closed it again, stood up and led Nicole over. “Um, Alex, my friend from Hufflepuff wants to meet you.”

Alex looked up into Nicole’s brown eyes and went pale. “Oh! It’s Haught! I mean, weren’t you the Chaser last year? The one who practically single-handedly won every match?”

Nicole shrugged. “I just like Quidditch. Um, will you sign my card?” And she handed Alex a card with her own face on it, cheering on her broom, and spinning upside-down. The picture Eliza had called “full of herself.”

“Oh, I, um, that’s. I could. If you. I mean.”

Lena handed Alex ink and a quill and pushed Alex to sign it.

Nicole said, “Actually, um, would you spend Valentine’s with me in Hogsmeade? I mean, we could talk about Quidditch over some butterbeer…”

Lena saw Alex blink, think, realize she was being asked on a date by a hot seventh year, and decide.

“I’d. I would. Um. Love to. Yes. I could. We. Yes.”

Lena, hiding a smile, went back to her table, and immediately told Winn what had just happened. 

He sighed deeply. “Of course. Everybody has a date except me. Oh, wait. Oh, shit. Maggie! And Vasquez!”

And Lena’s heart sank as she thought to herself: Just great. Luthor. You know that no good deed goes unpunished.

//

Ava and Sara walked through Hogsmeade hand in hand, grinning like a couple of fools. At first Max and his friends hooted and made rude comments, but then Sara kicked Max in the stomach and Ava threw John over her shoulder, and after that, they had no trouble at all. In Hogsmeade, it was much easier to get away with things like that, without all the teachers keeping an eye on them.

They wandered into Honeydukes Sweet Shop and inhaled the bright smell that was emanating from all the magicked candy in the bright colors.

“So, Ms. Sharpe. Sweets for the sweet. What can I get you?” Sara squeezed her hand.

“I’m a sucker for Bertie Botts…” Ava said shyly.

“Ooh, a risk taker. I like it.”

“And what can I get you, Ms. Lance?”

Sara Lance looked embarrassed. “My favorite is the licorice crickets, but they’re imported from the States, so the store near my home doesn’t carry them. But I think they have them here, and I like the way they jump around in my stomach.”

“Crickets for my lady.”

They made their purchases and exchanged the gifts. Then they left the shop and wandered through town, nibbling at the candy.

“Buttered corn,” said Ava. “Well, that’s lucky.”

Sara’s stomach chirped in reply and they laughed.

“How do you think they do it?” asked Ava.

“Do what?”

“Magic the beans. I mean if they can’t use Muggle synthetics. What kind of material can take on absolutely any flavor?”

“Sugar?

“But that’s processed, isn’t it?”

“Maybe honey, then? Why does it matter?”

“Well, remember that book we got out of the library? It said that publishers of spellbooks that have some actual magical component, like a self-locking mechanism, or automatic page turning, have to use different kinds of ink. Some inks don’t hold magic all that well, and certain kinds of spells have to use other liquids instead.”

“Wait, you mean like blood?” asked Sara, stopping short in the street.

“Well, yeah, but also tree sap for growing spells or boiled hot pepper juice for heat spells. Unicorn saliva. Snake venom. Wine.”

Ava handed Sara a pink bean.

“Cotton candy. Nice.”

They continued walking. Ava said, “I’ve been thinking about our spellbook. We need to make sure that we’re using an ink that has safeguards for that, that can handle a range of spells.”

“You’re suggesting we add honey to the ink we write the spells with?”

“It’s just a thought…” Ava ate another bean and made a face. “Yuck. Green beans.”

“So we get Kara to nick some honey from the kitchens?”

“Would that be pure enough? You know how Flitwick and Dahrk emphasize purity of ingredients. Doesn’t Professor Queen take care of the school’s beehives?”

“Hmm,” said Sara. “This does bear thinking about…”

//

James and Lucy always ended up in Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop, in part, James joked, because Lucy was so thin and always got cold.

Lucy snorted. “Or maybe it’s because you’re a foot taller than me and if I want to stare into your pretty brown eyes, we both have to be sitting down. Besides, Maggie recommended their Tiramisu.”

James waved at the waiter. “Two teas and we’ll split a Tiramisu, please.”

Just then they saw Alex walk in, looking dazed, followed by Nicole Haught, the Hufflepuff who had given up being Quidditch Chaser to be her House’s Head Girl.

James murmured, “Lu, does that look like…?”

“A date?” Lucy hissed. “But I thought Alex said—”

The waiter brought their tea, the tiramisu and two plates and small forks, then turned to take the other girls’ order, strawberry soup and cocoa. As the waiter moved away, they saw Nicole rub her thumb over Alex’s hand and Alex blush.

“Guess not,” said James. “Well, good for Alex.”

“Hey, you saying you like red-haired girls?” snapped Lucy.

James gave her an easy grin and rubbed his shaved head. “Hair is never the first thing I notice in a person.”

Which wasn’t really a “no” but Lucy would take what she could get.

//

For FitzSimmons, as locked at the hip as they normally were during the whole year, Valentine’s Day didn’t have much significance. They brought Simmons’s scales to Dervish and Bangs to be recalibrated, and while they waited, they admired the new Nimbus 6000. They heard a familiar voice and saw Vasquez talking to the shopkeeper about how Bludgers were made and magicked.

“Research,” said Simmons approvingly.

Fitz murmured, “Did you hear about Alex? The Hufflepuff Head Girl asked her out. Winn told me. Vasquez is going to be heartbroken.”

“And Maggie. And a few girls in our house, the ones who follow the Quidditch matches and cheer just for her…”

Fitz shook his head. “She doesn’t look like the type who would break hearts. Sara and Lucy, sure…”

The woman with oil on her hands handed them the scales and they paid her and left, with Simmons sighing, “Imagine how much better our object would be if we had more accurate scales!”

As they walked into the Three Broomsticks, Fitz said, “About that. I don’t think it’s an accuracy problem. I think it’s a scale problem. Maybe a whole spellbook is too much for us. Maybe we should just start with a single scroll…”

//

Kara and Lena came in right behind them. "That makes a lot of sense," said Kara. "I've been thinking a lot about our project. I was assuming we could simply borrow one of the school's spoons, but Maggie was saying that magic works better if you make your form factor from scratch. So what do we do, collect a ton of butterbeer caps and melt them down, shape the metal with a mold, like the lost wax method?"

Fitz shook his head, watching a waitress clean off a long table for their group. "That wouldn't work. Nothing about your project is about butterbeer, or even keeping something closed."

They moved to the table, FitzSimmons and Kara and Lena taking seats on either side of the middle of the table. Nobody said they were making it easy for Alex and Nicole to be on one end and Maggie and Vasquez on the other. They didn't have to. Everyone in question tried to hide their relieved looks. When James and Lucy entered, they sat between Kara and Maggie, and Sara and Ava took the spaces between Jemma and Nicole.

James and Fitz conferred and ordered Wizard Chips and Smoking Salsa for the whole table, along with butterbeers and water for all. Between the fireworks coming from everyone's mouths and the green smoke pouring out of their ears, they didn't have time for awkward conversations until the food was cleared and they all had a few butterbeers under their belts.

The waitress waved her wand once to clear their plates, and a second time to clear the cloud of smoke. Lena's jaw dropped. "Of course! Wandwood!"

"What about it?" asked Kara.

"For the spoon!"

Maggie shook her head. "You wouldn't be able to shape it. Only dragonfire cuts wandwood."

Lena's face fell.

Kara frowned. "But wizards had wands before the tenth century, didn't they?"

Vasquez grumbled, "Of course they did. The Founders--"

"Then how did they cut the wandwood before the discovery of fire dragons?" asked Kara very reasonably.

The table fell silent as every one stared at Kara.

FitzSimmons said, "The library--"

Nicole said, "Flitwick--"

Alex said, "Coulson--"

Vasquez sighed. "And when each of you brings back a stack of books to the Hufflepuff Common Room, we're all in research mode. But Kara, you have the most important task of all."

Kara sat up straighter and pushed her glasses up her nose. "I do? What?"

Gravely, Vasquez said, "You get the snacks."


	19. Interhouse Learning

Professor Queen woke up on Sunday morning, rolled out of bed and did his physical therapy exercises, stretching the muscles that had been torn in the attack back in the fall and cursing the Black Forest and its denizens. A poorly spelled letter sat on the kitchen table in Hagrid's hut, its owner asking about how the cabbages were getting on, and also the students. Queen liked Hagrid, but most days he had simply been too weary to sit down and write an answer. Maybe he would today.

He decided that perhaps he did have the energy to eat breakfast in the Great Hall, especially since the House Elves always made enough raspberry tart for Valentine's Day to feed the entire castle for three days straight.

Oliver Queen was fond of raspberry tart.

And because he had a very high-tech Muggle composite bow and several dozen very non-Muggle arrows, none of the teachers, not even That Woman, ever teased him about it.

He dressed slowly, but without the pain that he had been dealing with for months. The Healer at St. Mungo's had told him that eventually, he would wake up one morning and things would be better, but he hadn't believed her. He stood corrected. 

He arrived late to the teachers' table, and his Daily Prophet had already been dropped in his place at the table (conveniently not spilling his pumpkin juice and coffee). He piled his plate high with raspberry tart, frowning at Astra In-Ze, who simply raised one eyebrow and followed suit with a tiny nod. He liked her.

As he munched and read the breaking news (Lex Luthor walking free of the civil charges even as he stood soon to face the criminal charges), the political news (Minister of Magic Plump posturing before the EuroMage Conference), and the Quidditch results (Cannons suffering three serious injuries in the last game).

Seriously, it almost made him lose his appetite. Almost.

When he finished and was moving to go back to Hagrid's hut for the day, he saw the Gryffindor Beater hovering near the teachers' table. Sighing, he walked over to her.

"Danvers? What can I do for you?"

"Oh, no, sir," she said with wide eyes. "I wanted to talk to Professor Coulson about our next essay. Sir."

"Hmph."

He left the Great Hall, wondering what had happened to students since his day: dating across houses and actually worrying about their homework in advance. Lord V, he thought, had a lot to answer for.

//

Professor Coulson heard Alex say his name to the surly Magical Creatures teacher and he quickly finished his toast and walked over to her, wiping his mouth with his napkin.

"Ms. Danvers. How can I be of service?"

Alex balked at his words. What kind of teacher talked like that to a student? Her face was an open book. He said, "Let's find an empty classroom, shall we?"

The Charms classroom was nearby and full of sunlight at that time of day, and Alex appeared to relax a tiny bit. Coulson sat on the teacher's desk and gestured for Alex to sit in one of the front row student desks.

"How can I help you, Ms. Danvers?"

"Um, I have a couple of questions about the history of magic, like, before the tenth century..."

Intrigued, Coulson said, "I have followed your successes in Quidditch, and Professors Dahrk and In-Ze have mentioned your interest in... practical magic. But I never took you for a history buff."

"Well, sir, I'm not," said Alex forthrightly. "But my sister needs help with something, and I figured you would be the person to ask."

He nodded. "Ask."

"Um, sir, so Professor Queen has talked about how fire dragons were only discovered in 989. And Professor Flitwick talked about how Wandwood can only be cut with dragonfire. So how did our pre-medieval ancestors make wands without dragons?"

Coulson stared at her for a moment, then slowly smiled. "That," he said, reaching for a pad of paper from Flitwick's desk, "is an excellent question." He borrowed Flitwick's quill and ink and scribbled something down on a small sheet of paper. "You'll find your answer here. And if the librarian gives you sass about asking for this book, refer him to me."

Alex's eyes got wide. "Thank you, sir!"

"And Alex, once you find the answers you're looking for, if you need any more... help? Just let me know."

And as he left to go back to his chambers, he thought to himself, Huh. Kids these days. So much smarter than we were at that age.

//

Mister Giles didn't know how to handle it. Sure, students had always used the library, for studying before midterms and finals, and for flirting with each other between exams, but this? Spontaneous research? Unheard of.

(He ignored the aberration that had been Potter and his friends. Desperate times, after all.)

And anyway, Potter et al. had largely been Gryffindors, until almost the very end. This? This interhouse studying? This was unheard of.

Yet here they were: five Ravenclaws, three Hufflepuffs, and something like five Gryffindors? All apparently researching a topic that rumor had it was to support one of the Hufflepuff object teams? Outrageous. Between the thirteen of them, they took out twenty-nine books. That sort of thing only happened when students were studying for NEWTS and OWLS.

And only just maybe.

He noted in passing, that one of the books they took out was one of his personal favorites, Wandes Through the Ages, which had not been taken out of the library since 1956.

The whole thing defied belief.

//

Professor Flitwick stepped into the Headmistress's elevator and when the doors opened to deposit him at the door of her study, he said, "Catnip." The door opened.

He ambled to the comfortable wingback chair that faced her desk. The small table next to it had a bottle of port and some Brie and a note that said, "Back soon, Flit. Make yourself at home."

Flitwick happily spread Brie on the little soda crackers and poured himself a glass of port. Minerva knew his taste, old friend that she was, and always made sure there was a little something for him when they met every other week to discuss the goings-on at school, at home, and abroad. And let's be honest: Flitwick was one hundred twenty years old. He no longer gave any thought to his waistline.

By the time Minerva entered her study, he was feeling warm and satisfied, and she smiled. "The Brie is a gift from the Headmistress at Beauxbattons..."

"She's sweet on you, Minerva."

Minerva shrugged. "Not my type, I'm afraid. I always did prefer a man in a kilt to a woman in a glamour."

Flitwick laughed. "So," he said. "I assume you've received the teachers' reports?"

Minerva smiled. "The old guard doesn't know how to handle it, but Coulson and In-Ze are quite pleased--probably their experience teaching at Ilvermorny."

"Good thing you poached them."

"I did not poach. There was a temporary exchange of instructors." Her tone was severe.

"Mm hmm." Flitwick wasn't fooled.

Minerva smiled. "So Queen and Giles are upset, fine. It's good for them. Coulson and In-Ze are more flexible. They're good for this cohort. They don't see the world as quite so red and green."

"And M'gann?"

Minerva's smile grew bigger. "She is a treasure. She hides object lessons (if you'll forgive the pun) underneath other kinds of lessons. She actually told her Transfig class to transfigure a hawk into a handsaw!"

Flitwick choked on his port. "You are fecking kidding me, Minerva!"

"I do not kid, Professor, as you are well aware." Her r's were overemphasized.

"No, no, of course not... But what happened when the whole class failed?"

"You didn't hear about it? Four of them complained that they didn't want to risk killing the hawks, so she offered the two teams hams to work with, and one team turned theirs into a hand-shaped piece of pork, and they other made their ham in the shape of a saw."

"You don't say. We have some talent this year, now don't we."

"We do. And apparently, according to the House Ghosts, the children are referring back to the copious notes they took at your lectures, and applying the first principles you tried to teach them."

Flitwick stared. "Students actually rereading their notes? What is the world coming to?"

"Several of the teams have scaled back their projects considerably, focusing on simplicity and naturalness and purity. And they're doing that because they are helping each other. And asking for some very specific information from the teachers."

"Unheard of."

"Well, to be fair, a few of them are lawyers' children and they have read the contest rules very, very carefully. Flit, this was a brilliant idea of yours."

He nodded. "Desperate times. Did you see the Prophet?"

"That's why I was delayed. I met with some Aurors who are concerned about curses being used at the Ministry of Magic..."

"But Lord V is dead and gone."

"Hmph. V is gone. But L is alive and well."


	20. Unexpected Options

Kara had always loved to read and, due to her alien origins, could read very fast indeed. So the 826-page Wandes Through the Ages only took her an afternoon, although, to be fair, she was having a hard time reading the notes she had scribbled while she read. She'd have to work on that. But her heart felt lighter than it had in weeks.

Ever since she had started dating Lena, and Winn had told her about Lex, Kara had secretly done research on the Luthor family through the last two centuries on Earth, and her results had been... worrying. The Luthors had made alien xenophobia their family hobby long before it was cool, or even a common idea. In all the countries the family had ever lived, they had pushed for anti-werewolf, anti-goblin and anti-alien legislation. They had rejected attempts at freeing House Elves. They had insisted on Blood Purity among wizards, torturing Muggles and so-called "mudbloods." They were horrible people.

And Kara truly believed that Lena was good and sweet and open-minded. But Kara also knew that if anyone ever tried to sway her from her firm belief in science that Alura and her dad had trained her in, that the House of El was dedicated to, that the Danvers were dedicated to--well, she would... push back.

But she couldn't think about that now. The passage close to the end of the book had given her the answer to the question she had posed in the pub: how had pre-dragon wizards shaped Wandwood? She read:

"These newe-founde creetures were a great boone to wizard-kind, easily replacing the old reliance upon othre-werldly fyre from faeries, King Salamandrakes, and daemons called from othre realms. Finally, it was no longer onlie Kings and Queenes and Grand Viziers who could afforde the making of a wande..."

Kara closed the book, feeling tears welling up in her eyes as her heart raced. "Other-worldly fire. Oh Rao. I need to find Alex."

//

Vasquez hadn't really slept in days. Or actually, she supposed, nights. She knew that Nicole Haught was a principled girl, wouldn't push Alex past what she was comfortable with, but still. 

It was Alex. 

What if...? It didn't bear thinking about.

So when she dragged herself down to the Great Hall for breakfast on Wednesday morning, she was exhausted, irritable and really only wanted a huge garlic-covered bagel weeping a huge blanket of cream cheese: and the three tables she could bear to check with only had raisin bagels and butter.

She felt nauseous.

The only advantage to that was that her plate was empty when her family's owl, Piper, dropped the Daily Prophet, so it didn't knock over any food or drink. Small mercies.

And she had told herself she wasn't going to read the bad news, but part of the front headline read, "Luthor Cleared of All" and she knew she had to know the worst so that she could best protect Lena.

She had started the Anti-Slytherette Society against Bullying and Untoward Shitty Treatment (ASSBUST; thanks, Winn, for that name) primarily because when Alex's little sister had been sorted into Hufflepuff, she had realized that the Hufflepuffs experienced about 60% of the bullying. Also, she had wanted the Gryffindors to not only appreciate brave students (Alex), but also wicked smart students (Alex) and their families (Kara).

It had sounded unbiased in her head at the time. Sigh.

But when all three of the "good" houses (and occasionally Leslie Willis) had signed on to help Lena, she realized that maybe the genesis of her mission statement had been a little... narrow.

One only had to watch Little Danvers and Little Luthor together to see the kind of love they wrote songs, stories, and oh hell, epic poems about.

And Lucy had been skeptical. But then she had sacrificed her health to save Lena, and Vasquez realized that they would have to step up their game.

In the present, Alex came up behind Vasquez and sat down, automatically reaching for the Quidditch section of the paper, but then she jumped up, stammering.

"Oh, shit! Vasquez! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to! I just! Because we always! Well, I mean, used to! But now I! And Kara told me that you! But I can go find--"

Tiredly, Vasquez pulled her down to her usual place on the bench. "Settle down, Danvers. Ignore the Chudley Cannons. Lex is more important."

And while Alex, eyes wide and worried, read the front page, Vasquez went over to the Hufflepuff table to snag some waffles. They always had extra. The House Elves really loved Little Danvers.

//

Alex's heart, which had been beating wildly until Vasquez walked away, plummeted when she started reading the (several) Daily Prophet articles reporting on and weighing in on Lex Luthor's acquittal. She felt sick.

Until that weekend, she had had no idea that there were at least eight or nine girls who... really, really liked her. But once she had been seen by the whole damn school holding hands with Nicole Haught, former Chaser and current Head Girl for Hufflepuff, she couldn't really double back to her... friends?

Alex hadn't slept the last several nights, writing in her diary and chewing on the inside of her mouth until it bled. Nicole Haught made her... feel... things.

Things kind of like the feelings she had felt, in retrospect, for her Muggle best friend in elementary school, Vicky.

Things she had felt in passing for more than one teacher over the years.

And then there was Muggle television: Lucy Lawless, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ming-Na Wen, Briana Venskus...

At the time, those... crushes? had seemed like anomalies. Suddenly they started to look like a series of related data points.

Kara had told her about the GSA, and Alex had supported her sister in her new understanding about herself, even though she didn't understand it.

Except... maybe she was starting to understand it better than she had expected.

She shook her head and struggled to read the article. Lex was pompous and arrogant (as usual), and his lawyers were right asses. But money bought power, and power didn't care much about tone or respect. Alex put down the paper, not even remotely tempted to check on the Quidditch results (the Cannons had been losing regularly anyway...).

Maggie marched over to Alex, clearly chewing on the inside of her mouth (wait, she did that too?). She stood in front of Alex and said, "You need to talk to your sister. She's had a breakthrough on our project. We need your help. Flitwick is a fucking loser. He refuses to help us."

And then she walked away. And Alex knew that Maggie adored Professor Flitwick, wanted his job at Hogwarts when he retired if she didn't become an Auror like her aunt. So Alex recognized that whatever had just happened was probably very important.

Right?

//

During their last Care of Magical Creatures lesson, when they had marched through one of the tamer parts of the Forbidden Forest, Kara and Winn had taken the opportunity to scavenge for chunks of different kinds of wood and shove them into their bags. She now had pine, oak, maple, birch, sylph-tree and ogre-wood, several samples each. She had a break period in the middle of the day, and normally, she would have been in the library or Great Hall doing her homework, but she had done it all already.

Superspeed had its advantages.

So now she trudged up to the Astronomy tower, and went through the classroom to the balcony where the telescopes were normally set up, and she sat on the stone floor of it and laid out the pieces of wood and a number of different shaped spoons that she had borrowed from Quaff in the kitchens. None of the Houses were scheduled to have Astronomy for the next three hours. She looked around nervously, and then picked up the piece of pinewood.

It had been a few years since she had tried to carve anything with her laser eyes, not since that disastrous science fair project in third grade. The house in Midvale-on-Avon now had many more smoke detectors than it had back then. But on a completely stone balcony of a completely stone tower, she figured she would be safe. 

After two tries with the pine samples, she concluded that they were too soft for lasers. She brushed the ashes off her robes and move on. The birch also didn't cut well. The maple was better. The oak, sylph and ogre samples worked like a dream.

There was the scrape of a shoe on the stairs. Kara gasped, but when she turned, it was just Alex.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"I was afraid you'd be here making out with Lena."

"Yuck. We're just really, really good friends."

Alex remembered that her sister was only eleven. "Right. Great. That's."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just... a lot of changes in the last few days."

"So Nicole Haught. I didn't see that coming."

"You and me both."

"Are you okay?"

"It's... complicated. What are you doing up here?"

"Practicing carving spoons. With. You know. My eyes." Kara showed her the ten spoons she had carved, each with a letter on the handle. She picked up the one with the A and handed it to her sister shyly. "I know it's not the Equinox yet, but I thought, since I wanted practice anyway, I could make Equinox presents for everybody."

"Kara, you know humans don't celebrate...."

"I know. But it was almost Equinox when I came and I've been... remembering again. And I wanted some way to make it... nice, not horrible, to remember."

"I don't have anything for you..."

Kara smiled. "You've got about a month to find something."

"True." Alex sat down and put her arm around her sister's shoulders. "Maggie said that Professor Flitwick said no to something and that I needed to talk to you."

Kara frowned. "Lena thinks we need wandwood for our project."

"I know, she said at-- Wait, you want to? Dude, that stuff is seriously expensive and anyway you need a dragon to..." And then she looked at the spoons.

Kara said, "Other-worldly fire, that's what the book said."

Alex swallowed. "Mom is going to lose her shit."

"We don't really have to tell her..."

"If you make a magical breakthrough, she's going to find out. If you get in trouble, she's going to find out. Either way, it's going to be my fault."

"Sure, but if we get a patent, I know Lena will let me put your name on it too. Even wizards need retirement plans."

Alex laughed. "Okay, sis. I've got a few ideas."


	21. Problem Solver

Winn was a problem solver. So in anticipation of Valentine's Day being really depressing for him and all the other students who weren't dating anybody, he had asked for permission for them to use the Quidditch pitch for flying practice. And that had helped. 

Well, it had helped most of them. Maggie and Vasquez flew like demons and Winn asked some of the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws who had learned protection spells for that Slytherin match to be on the lookout in case they endangered themselves or others. And yes, there had been the need for two or three cases of Protego, so he was glad that he had been thinking ahead. Because Alex might be dating a seventh year, but he was pretty sure that if anything happened to two of her best friends, she would be destroyed. Well, that was not happening on Winn's watch.

And of course Maggie and Vasquez's broken hearts was yet another problem that Winn intended to solve. He'd always wanted siblings, and when he'd first gotten sorted into Hufflepuff, Maggie had taken him under her wing immediately, protecting him when the older students picked on him. And Vasquez too, long before Max Lord had made School Bully his job description, would swoop down like a black-robed avenger on anybody who bullied the younger kids. She even broke a seventh-year boy's nose once, was in detention for two weeks straight. She was pretty much his hero.

So at breakfast the following Saturday, he turned to see Vasquez reading the Daily Prophet alone as Alex was further up their House table with Nicole. He turned back to Maggie and said, "Everybody's been helping us and the Ravenclaws on our projects. Somebody needs to help the Gryffindors. James says they're stuck. Come with me? I've got some ideas, and I think you and I can help them."

And Maggie picked up her plate with the twice-toasted bagel and came with him to join Vasquez.

Vasquez glanced up as they joined her at the table. "No surprises, guys. The Lex news is bad. Being acquitted on the insider trading charges means he's still in control of the company."

"Yeah," said Winn. "The whole thing is horrible. That's not why we're here. We think we can help you with your team's object."

Vasquez put down the paper. "Go on."

"James let me read through your team notes, to see what you've tried so far--"

Vasquez frowned. "Yeah, he wasn't supposed to do that..."

"Be glad that he did. I think I figured out the problem. Meet us out in the Greenhouse in an hour."

//

Vasquez stopped off in the Gryffindor common room to get the team notes from James and threaten him for having shown them to Winn.

He just gave her an easy smile. "At least don't kill me until Winn's failed to solve it for us."

She smacked him on the head and hurried to the Greenhouse.

Winn and Maggie had gotten there before her, and Winn was standing at one of the class tables with a two-foot tall plant that was wrapping its ivy-like arms around him as he watered it. Vasquez automatically pulled out the silver knife for potions out of her boot. "Winn, get away from that!"

But he simply stroked the thing's leaves, saying, "Stand down, Vasquez. This isn't a Venus flytrap, it's an Amicus plant. They... hug things. Or people, or animals."

"So, you're saying, not to suck our vitals dry? Or poison us so it can eat us later?"

"Nope. Just to share our warmth, and it gives off a very sweet scent in return and then goes dormant for a while."

"And why are you showing me this?"

The plant pulled back its vines with a tiny sound like a sigh and grew still. Winn stepped up to Vasquez.

"You are a Gryffindor. You and Sara and Alex and James are such Gryffindors. You charge in, wands blazing, and to be fair, your House pretty much brought down Lord V that way. But we're Hufflepuffs. And one of the things I've learned from my House is that sometimes blasting your way through a problem just makes it worse. But nurturance, that can be very very helpful."

"I don't follow."

"You've got your notes with you. Show me the results of your last two tests."

Reluctantly, Vasquez flipped open the leatherbound notebook on the table.

"Okay, so when you put the sweater on that old mannequin and shot Bludgers at it in the Room of Requirement, they bounced off and one even deflated. So, yay! But then Alex put the sweater on and James shot a Bludger at her and the Bludger bounced off, but she got a bruise seventeen centimeters in diameter, dark purple and black. This was exactly what Maggie had told you guys about before: the Muggle bulletproof vests that stop the bullets but can't stop the force of the bullet from hurting the wearer. With a bullet, that's an acceptable outcome. With a Bludger, it's not."

"Okay, I am still not following you here."

"Your notes say that you guys put the Protego charm on the sweater."

"Of course."

"That's only going to protect the sweater. Not the person who's wearing it."

Vasquez stared at him. Maggie's face started to blossom into a smile.

"Wait," she said, "Little Winn, what are you saying?"

"We don't want to protect the sweater. We want the sweater to want to protect the wearer." Winn grinned. Clearly he thought he was a genius.

Vasquez stammered, "But a sweater can't want to protect someone."

"Mmm," said Winn. "And a plant can't want to give you a hug. And in the Muggle world, that is where this would end. But this... is not the Muggle world."

//

Alex wrote down a list of pros and cons, arguments for and evidence to support them, arguments against and counterarguments. She practiced them with Nicole. Then she went to Professor Coulson's book-lined office.

She knocked on his open door and he looked up from the book he was reading. His smile seemed genuine. There was a box of the American cereal Crunchberries on his desk and he offered her some but she just shook her head. She was already shaking enough. More sugar wouldn't help.

"Um, Professor. I think maybe you know why I am here..."

"Maybe. But why don't you tell me."

"My sister and her friends in Hufflepuff. Their project? They need some wandwood. And I know what you're going to say about cutting it. But they actually have that covered. And I know it's really, really expensive, but we calculated the minimum we need and it's not that much." She handed him a piece of parchment with the dimensions written on it.

He nodded slowly. "I had wondered... And I did offer, didn't I? The problem is that magic requires a price."

Alex's eyes went wide. "Um, sir?"

"You know this, Ms. Danvers. Magic without a price has no power."

And she did know that, but this, this just felt all kinds of wrong and out of character and potentially scary.

"You see, Ms. Danvers, acid rain and snow leave pollution on windows even this far into rural areas." He gestured to his windows, which were covered with pollen and more. "I... really don't like broomsticks. Long story. So, although I would normally wash my own windows, that's just not a good idea. But you are known as one of the best flyers in Gryffindor history, at least since Potter. Do you think you could steer your way clear to washing my windows up here? Then that would serve the whole 'magic has a price' trope and I could contact my friends and see what I could get for you."

Alex nodded, eyes wide, relief flooding her body. "Um, yes, sir. Right away."

"Excellent." He looked down at the piece of parchment. "I probably couldn't get you much more than this, but..."

"And sir, we could give you what's left over afterwards, if that would be something you need for your potions or stuff...?"

He smiled. "That is very generous. Yes, I think we have a deal." He held out his hand and she shook it.

Then she wandered off in shock. Those American teachers were very strange.

//

Professor Coulson was an American and he had a funny accent, so he called the owl that the school had put in his service, whose name was Albus, something that sounded much more like Owl-Bus. Often he said it with a little smirk, as if it was some kind of inside joke, but Albus wasn't good at reading human features, so he just assumed it was an accent thing and let it go.

And when he stuck one leg out and Coulson tied the message on, saying, "Usual person," Albus knew that he was going to Ilvermorny in the States, so he stuck out his other leg, for Coulson to tie on the little bag with the small gold piece for the fellow on the postal ship that left out of Liverpool. The extra weight wasn't a big deal, since that flight was short, and then Albus would get to hang out with hundreds of his old friends as the ship crossed the Atlantic, and he would be well rested and fed for his trip from Boston to the school of magic.

//

After they had talked about the wandwood, Alex's conversation with Kara had been illuminating.

Heartbreaking, but illuminating.

It had turned out that Kara had experienced a lot of the same things that Alex had: moments of attraction to other girls and women, all of them pushed down automatically, and then recently, a fucking revelation.

And Alex wasn't immune to Lena Luthor's jawline, her eyebrows, her... No. 

But there was something about Nicole Haught that had flipped a switch in Alex's head. Or body. Or something. She couldn't explain it to herself, much less Kara or Sara. 

And there was no way she could explain it to the girls they told her had huge, enormous crushes on her: Maggie from the Hufflepuffs, Vasquez from the Gryffindors, and the cross-House group (gulp) BARE: Beater Alex Rocks Everything. (And apparently Winn wasn't the only male member. She couldn't decide if that made her feel better or worse....).

Sara and Ava were the safest people she knew. Sara even suggested that, on the next Hogsmeade weekend she should go to the Flaming Scythe (the gayer of the two barbershops in Hogsmeade) to get an undercut or a fade.

Lucy agreed. "You could get a modified pixie, or, hell, I don't even know what to call it. I feel like hairdressers keep the magic words secret from us so that we keep coming back for them to fix their own mistakes."

And Kara had supported her, especially when Alex pointed out how cutting her hair would make their mother lose her shit.

"No, she won't. Get a pixie. Start there. You'll look so cute! And if we say it's because you don't want to waste time on your hair when you could be studying or practicing Quidditch or taking care of me?" Kara crossed her arms over her chest and pitched her voice lower. "Her shit will stay in place if I have to put it there myself!"

Which, to be fair, made absolutely no sense at all, but the confidence with which the eleven year old said it made all the other older students nod in agreement. And Alex thought, What the hell. She wasn't wrong about the wasted time.


	22. Works in Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Got distracted yesterday and forgot to post. On the upside I wrote 11 poems about Gentleman Jack. Once I've written another 50 I'll start posting, so basically August...

The Gryffindor students were working on at least two dozen objects, and most of the teams were very clearly in-House. Only Alex Danvers' team was working with other Houses and many of their peers felt they were cheating. Alex, James and Sara pointed out how the rules very clearly did not stipulate that getting ideas from other Houses was a bad thing. It didn't really help. But that didn't really stop them.

So while the arrow-returner, the combat-turnip-twaddler, and the submorphic-resonance-actuator (and nobody really knew what the hell that was meant to do), were on the books as very clearly Gryffindor-only projects, the sweater attached to two pots of Amicus plants in the south window was known to be an inter-house project. And as the plant carried the golden yarn in and out of the sweater's mesh, creating a golden belt around the midsection of the sweater, other students quietly stopped complaining so much and started studying the fairly sophisticated magic the team was using, a mix of charms, potions and herbology.

Leslie Willis found herself hanging around the Ravenclaw table at lunch one day, listening to FitzSimmons and Ava describing the problem of ink for their self-memorizing scroll.

“So we’ve tried to different inks. We’ve tried adding ground-up sponge for absorption and honey to make learning sweet, but that’s just metaphor, we still need chemistry and magical theory.”

Leslie said, “You guys are crazy. Besides, you’re making things too difficult for yourself. Why don’t you just reverse engineer the anti-cheating spells they put on our wands for exams? I mean, what you’re suggesting is basically a form of cheating, isn’t it?”

Jemma’s jaw dropped. “We do NOT cheat!”

Ava tilted her head. “Huh. That’s a fascinating idea. But we’re totally going to need a teacher’s permission. You know if there is a book on anti-cheating spells in the library, it’s going to be in the Restricted Section. And precisely because your integrity is so well known, Jemma, you’re going to have to be the one who talks to Professor M’orrz.”

Jemma looked like her head was going to explode. Fitz patted her on the arm.

//

The flight from the port of Boston to Ilvermorny allowed Albus to work off all the owl treats he had eaten on the voyage west. Trilling his goodbyes to his friends, he stretched his wings and flew. This much farther south than Scotland, the weather was warmer, which made the flying more comfortable, but it was still two days of flying before he saw the towers of Ilvermorny, and he glided down to the Great Hall to where a small Asian woman in severe black robes was pouring tea into her cup.

He called out, “Who!” and she turned and gave him a small smile.

He landed on the back of the chair next to her and extended his leg. She untied the message and handed Albus a piece of her waffle.

She read the message and said, “Give me a day or two and I’ll have something for you to bring back to him.”

Albus nodded and he flew to the school’s Owlery. It was seven o’clock in the morning. Time to go to sleep.

//

A week of snow meant that Quidditch practice was cancelled, but the students made up for it with snowball fights, and even Alex and Sara had to admit that the Slytherettes had built the mother of all snowforts. When Flitwick had laid eyes on it, he immediately gave the House an extra ten points, and everybody grudgingly admitted that it was well-deserved. That was the upside of the week.

The downside was the slew of pop-quizes their teachers unleashed on them, from the forty-minute essay on the Ministry’s Department of Misapplied Magic, to the challenge to transfigure a banana into a Band-Aid, to a potion to quench magical fire. For that last one, Leslie Willis got frustrated and tried to use Aguamenti, and ended up blowing up her corner of the potions classroom, sending her and Jemma Simmons straight to the infirmary with bad burns. It didn’t help, from Leslie’s point of view, that Jemma explained to her in great detail the Muggle problem of trying to put out a grease fire with water and how that analogy applied almost directly—

“Okay, okay, I get it,” grumbled Leslie.

Fitz and Ava came to check on them and brought them both chocolate frogs. At first Nurse Tenderloin said no to the candy, but Ava said, “But ma’am, chocolate is medicinal! If it works for the trauma of a Dementor, then surely the trauma from a sudden burn—”

And the nurse gave up. She knew better than to try to argue with a Ravenclaw.

After a while, Leslie’s eyes drifted closed and she emitted little snores. Jemma was studying the ceiling when Professor M’orrz came in, glanced at Leslie and handed a small leather-bound book to Jemma. 

She said, “Jemma, I’m sorry about your injury. I did confer with the Headmistress and she gave her permission for me to lend you my copy of the book you asked about. It’s much more up to date than the copy the library has.”

“Oh!” said Jemma. “Thank you, Professor.”

“I must emphasize, however, that you are the only student who has permission to read it. Do not give it to anyone else. Do not show it to anyone else. Do not leave it unattended. Do not leave any notes you take unattended. As soon as you are finished with it, please return it to me. Understood?”

“Yes, Professor. Absolutely.”

“Also, good luck with your object. Make the Ravenclaws proud.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Alone again, Jemma looked at Veritaserum and Its Discontents: Honesty and Cheating in Magic, feeling warm and content, even if her bandaged arms still hurt. She flipped through the book happily. “Lacewings, of course. And essence of murtlap as an emulsifier? Oh, bloody brilliant!”

Leslie rolled over, smiling.

//

On Saturday, the Gryffindor Quidditch team was playing the Hufflepuffs. Nicole Haught missed her days as a Chaser, but she knew that if she had to go up against Alex Danvers now, she’d probably fall off her broom. She wasn’t a member of BARE (because before she had thought it was tacky, and now it would just be weird), but she did bring her camera to the game. It wasn’t weird to take a few pictures of her girlfriend, right? And to be fair, Alex always made a good show, barreling underneath the Hufflepuff Chasers, hanging onto her broom by her fingertips with one hand as she smashed her paddle against the Bludger, sending it zooming between the Beaters and leaving them reeling in opposite directions.

And that gave the Gryffindor Chaser a chance to toss the Quaffle through the Hufflepuff goal. Down in the stands the Gryffindors cheered while the Hufflepuffs groaned. But Nicole knew that the Hufflepuffs had a not-so-secret weapon in the Danvers sisters’ innate competitiveness. She grinned as she saw Kara pivoting on her broom and zooming to the ground with the Golden Snitch struggling in her fist. Nicole knew she would have to listen to Alex grumbling that Kara should have been put into Gryffindor house, but it was worth it. In all her seven years at Hogwarts, Hufflepuff had never won the House Trophy, and this year they finally had a shot at it. And even if they didn’t win it, at least it was very clear that Slytherin would probably lose, which was acceptable.

The Hufflepuffs were carrying Kara on their shoulders as they headed back to the castle for dinner, singing, “Danvers is our Queen!” Nicole held back to wait for Alex, who stopped grumbling and gave her big heart eyes as they held hands walking across to the castle.

Several yards away, the Slytherettes were walking together, heads down, unhappy about the Hufflepuff win. John Corben glanced at Nicole and Alex. He didn't look unhappy. He looked bloody furious.

//

Leslie Willis was ambitious. When she was eight, she had taken apart a Muggle radio to see how it worked and then taken apart her father's wizard radio and then put the two back together as one object that got both sets of signals. She had not hated Muggle elementary school, because although the Muggle teachers were idiots, she had gotten to learn how things worked. But she loved Hogwarts. Here, they were teaching her to harness the magic that moved through her like electricity. Here she sat in the Slytherin common room, where some of the most powerful wizards who had ever lived had sat and studied (and occasionally laid plans for world domination).

And here she sat with Max Lord, John Corben, and Siobhan Smythe, carving chunks of wood into doorstops.

So much for world domination.

At least, unlike them, Leslie's fingers weren't covered with small bandages. All of them had chosen a different hardwood, claiming that it had more stopping power. But Leslie remembered what Alex had said about the Chinese wizard Lao Tzu, who had taught that soft always overcame hard, like dripping water wearing away stone. So Leslie had chosen pine, which was easier to carve and hopefully would also better absorb the potion they were still perfecting.

And by "perfecting" she meant "randomly trying crazy shit and watching it fail."

Although she'd been right about the bubble gum.


	23. Some Days Go From Bad to Worse

Lena Luthor was used to having bad days, even at Hogwarts where she had teachers who respected her mind and friends who loved her heart. She was used to the Slytherettes bullying her, both in general and more specifically after the Daily Prophet reported about her brother. And while the other three Houses were going to heroic measures to protect her, it didn’t leave her immune to the disparagement. And if she gritted her teeth while she sent back scathing retorts, well, hopefully wizarding dentistry was more advanced than that of the Muggles, and she’d still have all her molars by the time she graduated. But none of that prepared her for the snowy owl who coasted over the Hufflepuff table that morning, strategically dropping a letter into her pumpkin juice before it disappeared again out the window. Lapis, Lex’s owl, was not known for sticking around for bits of waffle, at least not from her. With trembling hands, Lena unfolded the letter, immediately recognizing her brother’s characteristically narrow handwriting. It read:

Dearest Sister,

I am sure you have read of my difficulties in court of late and the terrific efforts being made by my legal team to thwart my enemies who have sought to malign me. Rest assured, Lena, that the Luthor legal team has upped their game over the last few years and your dear brother still walks free. Amidst my own tribulations, however, I have heard disturbing rumors that the youngest member of the Danvers family—long our family’s enemies—managed to trick the Sorting Hat into putting her with you in Hufflepuff House. Beware of consorting with her. She is almost undoubtedly conspiring against you, despite her apparent tender age. Trust your loving brother to know what’s best for you. Keep to yourself and stick to your studies.

Affectionately, Lex

“Oh, Lex,” muttered Lena. “You were always such a stuffed shirt.”

Maggie caught her look. “Bad news?”

“You could say that,” said Lena, handing her the letter.

Maggie read it and whistled. “And I thought my family was messed up.”

Lena took the letter back, folded it and tossed it into her bag. “In the Olympics of bad families, you’d maybe get a bronze, though you’d have to beat out Lucy.”

Maggie sighed. “My aunt always says, ‘It sucks but it makes you resilient.”

Winn ran in yawning and threw himself down on Lena’s other side and started eating hurriedly.

“Nobody asked the coal if it wanted to be a diamond,” said Lena. "Maybe wandwood won't want to help us..."

“Speaking of which,” said Winn with his mouth full. "Was Professor Coulson willing to help us? Will that be enough? Also, did you read the last chapter in the book?"

“Of course.” Eyebrow.

“Let me rephrase, Smartypants. Did you understand the last chapter in the book?” asked Winn.

“Well, the theory, mostly," answered Lena. "Not sure how to apply the math. Kara asked Alex, and she said it was about ratios, something about counteracting the relative stiffness or springiness of the wood your wand is made of with wrist-work and the softness or loudness of your voice.”

Winn frowned. "So simply being, I dunno, Max Lord would make us stronger?"

Maggie looked away. Lena put her hand on the girl’s arm, mentally smacking Winn’s head. Out loud, she said, “Loudness is only a very small part. I heard Lucy yelling at James last night. She was trying to explain something to FitzSimmons and he kept interrupting her.”

“Maybe she wasn’t explaining it right,” said Winn, staunchly defending his crush.

Lena and Maggie both glared at him.

“Or… not…?”

They both got up and left him behind. As they made their way to their classrooms, Maggie asked tentatively, “Has Alex heard anything yet from Professor Coulson?”

“Not yet.”

//

Max Lord came up behind Lena and Maggie, heard their conversation and tried to get closer, but at that point they split up to go to their different classes. He'd have to ask Leslie if she knew what was going on. He was pretty sure that the teachers weren't supposed to help the students, but if the Hufflepuffs and the Gryffindors were cheating in that way, then for sure the Slytherins weren't going to be the ones left out. Maybe Professor Dahrk could help them with the potion they were going to try on the different doorstops. So far they had tried out eleven different deflectance potions and one that was supposed to slow down time, but nothing had worked. If he was going to be honest, they really could use some help.

He made his way to the DADA classroom to see Professor In-Ze setting up the dummies for wandwork. He grinned until he saw who she was putting him up against: Sara Lance. Well, if he couldn't beat her with fast hands, maybe he could psych her out with his fast wit.

"Hey, Sara, is it true that Ava calls you her Care Bear?" He waved his wand and their dummy wobbled.

"Well, as nicknames go, it's better than Sugar Smax." She waved her wand and the dummy fell over.

"Keep your elbows in!" yelled the professor, over the hum of conversation and the sound of wobbling dummies. "You're all flapping like chickens."

Across the room, Max saw Alex send her dummy flying into John Corben. He was pretty sure it had been intentional. John had been low-key flirting with Nicole Haught all year, convinced that her dating that Waverly chick the year before was just a phase. When he had seen her and Alex holding hands in Hogsmeade, he had gone off on a rant. When they continued to hold hands at every opportunity, he pretended to vomit. Max and Leslie told him to just let it go, but he wasn't letting it go. He shoved them in the hallways and Max was pretty sure he had tripped Nicole that one time when nobody else was looking, but then the stairway had started moving, so he hadn't said anything. Maybe he had been wrong.

Maybe he should talk to him again. Max had no problem teasing Winn for being gay, but going around trying to hurt people just seemed wrong.

Sara looked over to where John reset the dummy and then waved his wand around, to no avail. "Professor's right. He does kinda look like a chicken..."

Keeping his own elbow close to his ribs, Max waved his wand and their dummy slowly wobbled and tipped over. It was a small win, but he'd take it.

//

After her last Potions class, Professor Dahrk went up to the Owlery. She had seen the snow-white bird drop a note for Lena Luthor, and she had a note that she wanted to send back to Lex. It was better not to use the school birds for such things.

The Owlery smelled like feathers. Fortunately, the House Elves cleaned the birds' excrement off the floor several times a day so that people sending messages didn't track it back into the rest of the castle. Nora Dahrk liked things neat. It was one of the problems with working with a wizard like Lex Luthor. His magic was always meticulous, but as a human, he himself was a bit... messy.

She stepped forward and brushed a finger over the sleeping bird, who opened one eye sleepily and stuck a leg out. She went to tie her message onto it but then realized that there was already a message there--with her name on it. She unfolded it. All it said was, "1 a.m. Potions fireplace."

Well, now that couldn't be good.

//

Lena couldn't sleep. She kept thinking about Lex's strange letter. He hadn't written to her in two years, not since she first came to Hogwarts and had, from his perspective, failed to be sorted into Slytherin. The more she thought about it, the more it bothered her. The letter hadn't really said anything at all. But what if it wasn't about the letter? What if it was about the owl? When Lex had sent his owl to Professor Dahrk, that one time, it had attracted a little attention. But who would notice Lex sending a letter to his sister? Restlessly, Lena got up and made her way to the common room.

Kara was there in her plaid pajamas, digging in her schoolbag where she had left it near the fire. "Hey, Lena, what are you doing up?"

"Can't sleep. You?"

"Hungry." As if in agreement, Kara's stomach growled. She rolled her eyes. "I thought I had some biscuits left over, but I guess not. Join me in a trip to the kitchen?"

Figuring that watching Kara eat was better than tossing and turning, Lena followed her out of the dormitory and down the hall to the door with the picture of the wedding cake.

Just as Kara raised her hand to knock, they heard a crash from behind the door. Lena jumped, but Kara threw open the door and ran in, yelling, "Quaff! Are you okay?"

A large figure in black robes pushed past her out the door, knocking Lena over. She landed next to Kara's favorite House Elf, who lay on the floor, bleeding heavily from the head. An iron skillet with blood on it lay a few feet away.

"Get Nurse Tenderloin," said Kara, reaching for a towel to staunch the wound. "Then get McGonnigle."

Lena ran off.


	24. Closing the Barn Door...

Minerva McGonnigle woke with a start to see the ethereal form of Nearly Headless Nick raving about students out of bed, House Elves bleeding out in the kitchen and bald wizards running loose through the castle. She told him to round up the teachers and meet her in the Infirmary, then threw on her tartan robe and raced down to the kitchen.

The first thing she saw was Kara Danvers with blood on her hands and Nurse Tenderloin saying, "No, it's fine, child. You did just the right thing, applying pressure. Might have saved his life."

Then the nurse used Levicorpus to transport Quaff to the Infirmary. Minerva washed Kara's hands magically, then took her by the hand and they followed.

Kara spoke very quickly. "I was late getting to dinner because the stairs kept moving, and so I didn't have time to eat enough and so I woke up hungry and I couldn't find the biscuits I'd saved and maybe Winn ate them even though he knows better, and then Lena came down to the common room 'cause she couldn't sleep either and so she came to the kitchen with me to keep me company and just as we got to the door, we heard this crash, and I just assumed that Quaff had dropped something, and maybe it was hot and he'd need help and so I ran in calling his name and some big guy pushed past me and knocked Lena down and ran out and then I told Lena to get the nurse and you, and I got a towel to try to stop the bleeding because heads shouldn't bleed that much--"

She gasped for breath. Minerva cut in. "You did the right thing and it may be that stomach of yours saved Quaff's life. Good thinking, Kara. Five points for Hufflepuff."

By the time they got to the Infirmary, almost all the teachers were there. Nurse Tenderloin said to the Headmistress, "It's a serious concussion. We need to get him to St. Mungo's. I've got him stabilized, but they can care for him far better there."

"Do it. Professors, search the castle. We appear to have an intruder, and while it is possible that they already have gotten away, we should make absolutely certain."

The teachers raced off.

Lena and Kara stood in the infirmary, shivering in their pajamas. Nurse Tenderloin gave them a blanket to wrap themselves in. "We'll keep you here until the castle is clear. Can't have you wandering about with some rogue wizard on the loose."

//

When Professor McGonnigle had become Headmistress at Hogwarts, she had put in place certain precautions, largely based on the many near disasters from the Potter Days. As with Operation Severus in case of danger on the Quidditch pitch, they had Operation Sirius in case of an intruder in the castle. Every teacher had a specific portion of the castle to search. They had even had alarms and practices over the summer.

Astra swept through the Great Hall, the first level bathrooms, the kitchen, her DADA classroom and the hallways around the Weasley Memorial Swamp. She expected to see Nora Dahrk, because their beats had overlapping edges, but then it occurred to her that she hadn't actually seen Nora in the Infirmary, so she made a detour down to the Potions classroom.

The door was hanging open, off its hinges, with burn marks. The floor was littered with broken glass and sparks were flying as the potions that the vials and beakers had contained ran into each other on the floor, changed colors, smoked and burst into purple and green flames. Cautiously, Astra lit her wand and stepped around the broken glass and oozing messes. Behind the last lab table, she saw an outflung arm. She stepped forward to see Nora, eyes wide open and unresponsive. She bent down and put her hand near Nora's mouth; at least she was breathing. Whatever spell she had been hit with, it was powerful.

She used Levicorpus to carefully maneuver Nora back to the Infirmary, where Nurse Tenderloin gasped and tutted. Nearby, the two Hufflepuff girls sat on one of the beds, wrapped in a blanket together, their eyes wide.

Astra hated to do this, but she had to. "Miss Luthor, do you think it was your brother?"

Lena shook her head. "I didn't see anything except the black robes before I fell."

"Miss Danvers, did you see your attacker's face?"

"Not his face. I was looking down. But, um, I did think he was bald... Sorry, Lena."

"It's okay, Kara," said Lena wearily. "But if it was him, why? Why attack Quaff and the professor?"

And Astra had a few ideas about that, but wasn't about to discuss them with students.

//

At breakfast in the Great Hall the next morning, all the students were in uproar over the news that an intruder had destroyed the Portions classroom, put the Potions teacher in St. Mungo's, and done serious damage to the kitchen. The Slytherins immediately started spreading rumors (proudly) that the intruder had been Lex Luthor, even though the teachers had avoided even suggesting such a thing. Sara suspected the Bloody Baron was to blame. And with all that rumor-mongering going on, most of the school missed the part about the House Elf who was also assaulted.

It didn't surprise Sara at all that the Hufflepuffs talked about Quaff with their interhouse friends while the rest of the school focused more on the (alleged) attacker and less on the victims. Kara insisted that they do something for Quaff, and they decided to pool money to get him a gift basket from Honeydukes. (And if Professor Flitwick got a tear in his eye when they asked him to make sure the House Elf received it, well, probably no one noticed.)

What Sara noticed was 1) how none of the Slytherettes seemed to realize the oddity of Lex, a Slytherin, attacking the Slytherin Housemaster, and 2) how they clearly didn't care nearly as much for their own Housemaster as her friends cared about a "mere" House Elf who only a few of them had actually met. But the ClawHuffleDors loved Kara and had seen how hard she had to work to deal with her unfortunate metabolic disorder, and they all knew that Quaff had been helping her all year, not treating it as a chore but as a creative challenge. And (the horrible name Winn had come up with notwithstanding), the CHDs loved Kara and Quaff loved Kara, so they loved Quaff (QED, as Professor Grant would say).

And Sara was all for team morale, but she was also a forward planner. If the intruder was a mystery, then they had nothing to go on. But if it were Lex? How could they explain his attack on the kitchen and the potions classroom? What did they have in common, or who?

Sara was distracted from her thoughts by the Headmistress announcing that, while the Aurors from London investigated the crime scenes, Potions would be held in the Great Hall, taught by either Professor M'orrz or Flitwick, depending on which was free in a given period.

//

Professor May dragged herself out of bed on Thursday and refused to reply to anyone's overly cheerful "Good morning!" until she'd had at least one good strong cup of tea. She remembered her first year, when the Defense Against Dark Arts professor had tried to greet her with a cup of coffee and then mansplained grade inflation. She had challenged him to a duel right then and there and, with all the students of Ilvermorny watching, whooped his sorry ass.

Well, that was one way to get an instant promotion. And DADA sure as hell beat Arithmancy. Learning how to code and decode was important, sure, but it wasn't nearly as much fun as hand-to-hand combat.

She felt her robes flutter and turned, unsurprised to see Barry Allen, the Rincewind Memorial Professor of Magical Escapes, right next to her, holding a very large travel mug. Now there was a young man who actually enjoyed his coffee.

"Do you have news for me?" she asked. "Or are you just giving me a chill for the fun of it?"

He grinned. "I got what you asked for." He handed her a package. "May I ask--?"

"No."

He nodded affably. "You do realize," he said earnestly, "that in theory, there is a luxury tax when exporting this stuff to another country."

"There's a loophole for scientific research, luckily. Thank you, Barry. Now mind your own business."

"I always do."

//

Albus had enjoyed his stay in the States, as he always did, even if their accents were bloody peculiar, but he was glad to be heading home. He landed in the Owlery at the Port of Boston, and extended one leg for the young man to untie the bag with the gold coins, and then flew to his favorite perch, rearranging himself to accomodate the little bag with the piece of hard wood and the note.

It would be good to be back home in the highlands. International travel was for the humans.

//

Minerva put out a good strong Stilton blue cheese to go with the port and crackers. Like Professor Morrz, Flitwick had been putting in extra hours to teach potions in place of Dahrk, and he deserved a bit of extra pampering. Minerva had just herself flown back from the meeting in London, and she knew that a bit of protein was just what the healer ordered.

Flitwick appeared, disheveled and tired. "Sorry, Minerva. The students keep asking me questions after class, regarding their projects. They followed me through the halls, all the way here. I've never seen children so interested in practical applications before."

"Hmm. Maybe we should make this a regular thing, biannual perhaps?"

Flitwick grunted and reached for the port. "What's the news from the city?"

"Plump's cabinet came out in support of Lex, even though the smart money is saying he can't ditch the criminal charges as he did the civil ones."

"And Gringotts?"

"They are pretty sure it was Lex, but the evidence is all circumstantial."

"Disappointing."

"The students?"

"Just as we anticipated. The vast majority of the teams are going it alone, house-wise, with the kind of lackluster results you might expect from such a course of action. In contrast, the interhouse teams are, what is the phrase? Crushing it? I have great hopes of these kids. And the younger Danvers reminds me of Potter. The same je ne sais quois."

Minerva sighed, one eye clandestinely noting the Heads' portraits listening in. "They might just save us all."


	25. Ch. 25: Destined to Repeat It

James liked to believe that he paid attention to details, and although his Potions teachers might have begged to differ, it was true that he noticed things that other students apparently didn't see. So, at the end of the day's History of Magic class, when Professor Coulson had made significant eye contact with Alex and then she had hung back, unpacking and repacking her bag, he had hung back in the corridor just outside the door, just long enough to see the teacher hand Alex a small package wrapped in brown paper. Then he had to skedaddle, as Alex came through at a dead run, almost as if their next class was in the basement, which it wasn't. 

He wanted to chase her, but he felt like that would be a bad idea, so instead he went to Herbology, and was intrigued when Alex arrived in class late and had to take a five point loss for Gryffindor to make up for it. And she seemed unapologetic. The whole thing was out of character.

And the following day, he just happened to notice Alex, with her broom over her shoulder, leaving the castle, but heading in the opposite direction of the Quidditch pitch. He followed her, pulling his trusty camera from his bag. He would find out what she was up to and get evidence that she couldn't deny.

So he was surprised to say the least when she filled a small bucket with sudsy water and rags and then flew up to one of the towers and began washing the windows of what was probably one of the professor's offices. He took pictures with his telephoto lens, but he would need to look at a map of the castle to figure out whose office it was. Weird, though.

//

Max Lord rubbed his eyes. He had been staying up late reading everything he could on charms and potions that blocked movement, recognition, cobwebs, spiderwebs, magical tampering and just magic in general. But their potion wasn't doing anything to the carved wooden doorstops they had worked so hard to make, and he couldn't figure out what he was missing. When his group showed up in the Slytherin common room, he said, "I think we've failed."

John Corben snorted. "We haven't tried everything yet."

Siobhan said, "We still haven't added iron filings. You know that was a major part of the spell that stopped the faeries from coming back to England in the nineteenth century."

Leslie said, "I heard that the Ravenclaws are using lacewings. Apparently they help in the anti-cheating spells they use on our quills for exams."

Max grunted. "That might work. The problem I'm having is that all of these things are in suspension, and we shake it but then it settles before we pour it on the stops."

"So you need an emulsifier?" asked Leslie. "Essence of murtlap would fix that."

John laughed. "A healing goop? You've got to be joking."

"Well, it does stop bleeding." Leslie didn't laugh.

Max's eyes went wide. He grabbed Leslie and kissed her right on the lips. "You're a genius!"

"Hey! Consent here! Also, sorry Max, but you're not my type."

"Oh God!" yelled Corben. "Not another dyke!"

Leslie never saw the haymaker coming. She hit the floor and rolled over, unconscious. 

Siobhan punched John in the stomach. Max wrestled him to the floor, took off his House necktie and tied John's hands behind his back. "That's it," he growled. "Fun and games are one thing, but this is unacceptable. She's our House, dude!" He looked up to Siobhan. "Go get Flitwick. This has to stop."

Siobhan nodded and took off.

//

It was across the school an hour later, that Max Lord of all people had tattled on his best friend for knocking Leslie Willis unconscious because he thought she was a lesbian. The Headmistress apparently had taken fifty points from Slytherin for Corben and added five points for Lord, and although nobody could prove that she had muttered under her breath about John being "a homophobic little shite," they all chose to believe it anyway, especially when they heard that his punishment was cleaning the Owlery floor, by hand, every day for a month.

When Max came down to the Great Hall for dinner that night, the ClawHuffleDors stood up and applauded, and the rest of their Houses followed suit, while his own Housemates looked furious and closed ranks on him when he tried to sit at their table. Alex and Nicole traded a look and then went over to his table and escorted him back to theirs. He was red all the way up to his ears.

When the cheering stopped, Professor McGonnigle stood up to make an announcement. "Yes, yes. Good show. Now, tomorrow morning, the Ministry is sending Aurors to investigate the unfortunate attacks from the other night. The area near the kitchens and the Potions classroom will continue to be off limits while they do their work. Do not gather there and do not in any way impede their investigation. Professors will continue patroling the castle at nighttime and you should rest assured that we are keeping your safety our number one priority. Also, next weekend is a Hogsmeade weekend, so if you want to be sure that you will be allowed to participate, you will keep in mind these restrictions."

The following morning, a small brown owl flew down to the Hufflepuff table and politely dropped a small envelope into Maggie's hands. She fed it bits of her bagle before it flew off to rest. Maggie opened the letter and read.

Kara and Lena waited, watching the different emotions on Maggie's face as she looked around the table, apparently processing something. Lena took out her own quill and ink and handed them to Maggie, who muttered her thanks and quickly scribbled a note on the back of the letter and then ran off toward the Owlery.

Kara said, "What do you think that was about?"

"My guess," said Lena, "is that her aunt, the Auror, is coming for a visit."

"And by visit you mean investigation."

"That too, but from what I've heard about Elena Sandoval, she genuinely loves her niece, and family take the time for each other, no? At least, so I've heard."

//

Professor McGonnigle waited in her office with Flitwick and Coulson while Professor In-Ze escorted the Auror back up to the office. Then the three of them sat there while the woman scribbled a few more notes in a Muggle notebook and then looked up. Wearing the brown trenchcoat of an Auror and the high bald fade of a deeply butch woman, Elena felt a bit out of place back at her alma mater, which still reminded her more of the middle ages than Eton.

"Professors, thank you for calling with your update on the teacher and the House Elf's attacker. Neither of the victims has so far returned to consciousness, although we are hoping that they can ID the person in question. Is there anything that you know of here at Hogwarts that someone might want to find? Something valuable?"

They looked at each other with blank faces.

The woman continued. "Both the Potions lab and the kitchen showed signs of a hurried search. It looks very similar to the attempted theft at Gringotts a few months back. We know that failed, though we don't know what the thief was looking for."

McGonnigle said reasonably, "Surely the owner of the vault would have an idea, no?"

Sandoval sighed. "The owner of the vault is 159 and on any given day, thinks she's still conjuring spellbooks at Henry Wilson-Wilson Ltd. The only thing we do know is that she is the last known living descendent of Helga Hufflepuff. But since Lord V's collection of... memorabilia... was destroyed by Potter and Company, we can't think what else of hers anyone would want."

Coulson's jaw dropped. He said hesitantly, "Well, there's always her spoon."

They all turned in his direction. 

In-Ze snorted. "That's a myth. Everyone knows that."

Sandoval frowned. "I'm sorry, her spoon?"

Flitwick shook his head. "It was supposed to strengthen potions, extend their usefulness. I agree with Professor In-Ze. It's a myth. People across the centuries have always wanted to believe that we weren't as limited by the physical world as we are. Please don't tell me you are a SpoonerPuff, Professor Coulson."

Coulson seesawed his hand back and forth. "Little bit. I did my Auror's thesis on Helga's spellbooks. She was always working on several projects at once and her notes are not in any way linear, but if you put several of the notes across several of her working books together, it's actually not implausible. She was trying to create something like that."

"But she didn't succeed," said Flitwick.

Sandoval made a note. "Doesn't mean that people don't believe that she could have. Whether or not it actually exists, people who believe might be looking for it." She closed her notebook. "That might be helpful. We'll look into it."

Everyone stood up. The Auror said, "One more thing, before I go. My niece mentioned a fellow student, one John Corben? Do you think I could have a word with him?"

"He has been dealt with," said McGonnigle.

"I'm sure he has, ma'am. But speaking as an Auror, you can't nip this kind of behavior in the bud too soon or too emphatically. Sociopaths start young. I'd like to put the fear of the Ministry into him."

//

The next time anyone saw John Corben, he looked like he's walked through a ghost. Maggie smiled.


	26. Ripping What You Sew

It was M'gann's turn to teach Potions to the fifth years. Again. There was an Auror constable standing guard over the Potions classroom, still, and he had made her sign out the potion ingredients that she needed for the Polyjuice Potion, and had listened to her snarl about how there should have been at least a pound more lacewings, and he even made a note about it in his log, although why Lex Luthor or anybody else who wasn't a student would want to steal lacewings was beyond her. Oh well, if the students were stealing potion ingredients (and of course they were, students always did even when they weren't in a competition), they would have to do their graded schoolwork at a disadvantage.

She did stop by the Infirmary, though, to warn Nurse Tenderloin that she was quite likely going to have some unfinished transformations to sort out among the fifth years, so that the woman could Apparate to London and pick up more Pepperup Potion and other needfuls before dinner.

It was one thing to show students that actions have consequences, but they didn't have to be cruel about it.

//

The moment the Gryffindors realized that there wasn't going to be enough lacewing to go around, they grabbed it all for their house. The Ravenclaws just shrugged. They had been doing enough research into potion ingredients and what could be used to replace more expensive or rare inputs that they pretty much just kept mixing, chopping and stirring without batting an eye. FitzSimmons folded some parchment into an origami butterfly with pinholes in its wings, for example.

Jemma kept up a running commentary as Professor Morrz stalked among the students with her hands behind her back. "... and in fact, Japanese wizards didn't even have access to lacewings until Commodore Perry opened the country up to American imports in the 1860s..." And Ravenclaws got five points right there for her knowledge. Alex, who always carried a piece of string in her pocket, because you just never knew, tied it into an elaborate Chinese knot and handed it to Vasquez, who said, "Seriously, Danvers? Well, if you say so."

The ensuing small explosion--more like a puff of smoke and microspray--was, insisted Alex, supposed to happen.

On the other side of the room, Sara and Ava produced their potion the more traditional way, although as Ava pointed out, this was a term-long project since the potion had to sit and steep for a few weeks. "So we can do more research into some of the later ingredients and possible replacements at our leisure."

All in all, the students noticed that Professor Morrz looked way less pissed off at the end of the class than she had at the beginning, so that was something, right?

//

Between classes and dinner, John Corben picked up a Muggle paint scraper and bucket and made his way to the Owlery. The Auror who had... talked to him... had been very specific about the part of Azkaban reserved for people who committed hate crimes, had pointed out that, while juveniles weren't actually sent to the island penal colony, Magical Law Enforcement kept track of juvenile offenders on the off chance that they decided to offend again after they turned seventeen. And she had told him to get his hair cut and get his ass on track because she expected to be returning to Hogwarts at times in the near future to finish her official investigation and she would be keeping tabs on him.

Compared to her... talk... the Howler from his parents was child's play.

//

After dinner, Professor Coulson returned to his rooms, kicked off his shoes and returned to the place marked by a Chudley Canons 2015 Playoffs ticket in The Complete History of Games: Concerning Quidditch, Cricket, Lawn Tennis and Football (by which of course they meant soccer), and settled down to read. He was barely a few pages into the new chapter when a sharp rap on his door disturbed him.

"Come in?"

Astra In-Ze strode in, her black robes swirling around her.

Coulson sighed. "Astra, are you here to berate me for believing in an old witches tale?"

She frowned at him regally, opened her mouth, and sighed. "Phil, I honestly don't know. I have read convincing arguments for both sides: it exists and it doesn't, couldn't exist."

"And?"

"And the Auror is right. That doesn't matter if someone thinks it does, might, could. They will dig for it. And that alone could be dangerous for us and for the children."

He nodded.

"What most concerns me isn't Helga's spoon, but rather whatever danger Lex or whoever's conviction about it might pose."

He opened his mouth, saw where she was going with this, and closed it. "Ah. Yes. You might want to take a seat then..."

//

Quaff woke in an unfamiliar place with an enormous headache and some sort of linen wrapped around his aching head. He tried to roll over, but that led to more pain in his head, so he immediately stopped.

A kindly voice said, “Steady along there, Mr. Quaff. We didn’t want to give you a pain potion until you regained consciousness. Can be dangerous, that. But I’ll let Healer Gideon know that you’ve come to. You’ll feel better soon.”

“Where…?”

“St. Mungo’s, sir. Also, sir, your friends back at Hogwarts sent you a little gift. They must hold you in high esteem, sir.”

Quaff had never been called “Mr.” or “sir” in his life. The idea of anyone holding him in high esteem also seemed like the sort of thing a head wound might cause. Tentatively he said, “Friends?”

“Yes, sir. The students, sir. They sent you a gift basket, didn’t they. Honeydukes, sir. Quite a treat! Now I’ll go get the healer…”

Quaff thought of Kara and her friends and found that a small smile didn’t actually make his headache worse, though he knew that, even if it had, he still would have smiled.

//

Oliver Queen watched the student from his house, Lance, and her Ravenclaw girlfriend, Sharpe walking gleefully away with the jar of new honey that he had taught them how to gather. He brought the smoking torch to the rain barrel and put it out, glancing to the eastern horizon. Moonrise wouldn’t be for another few hours. He’d have some time before needing to get to the Shrieking Shack.

He put the kettle on the fire and spooned chocolate into his mug, shook a handful of Honeydukes exploding mini-marshmallows out of their box and tossed them on top of the chocolate. The outside of the box proclaimed that it held Nuclear Nourishing Nettles for your pumpkin patch! Occasionally, one of the students would come by with a question, and he didn’t like to advertise his sweet tooth. The water came to a boil and he grinned as he poured the water into the mug, leading to small sharp POPS and the rising chocolatey steam he loved. He stirred the ensuing loveliness and sipped happily.

There was a rap on his door. His hand slid to his compound bow, but then he heard the happy little squees of Acorn, his accidental pet Niffler, recognizing his guest, so he left the bow and opened his door to Professor Morrz.

“M’gann. To what do I owe the pleasure? Cocoa?”

“Not today, thanks. Got a minute?” She looked exhausted.

“Of course.”

“I hate to do this to you, but the students have been scavenging potion ingredients again, and some things I’ve sent to London for, but we are way over budget for the year and I was hoping you could help me collect a few things in the Forbidden Forest to make up the shortfall.” She handed him a list.

He read it, nodding. “Unicorn hair is a no-go. It’s mating season. I steer clear. But the scallop beetle shells are easy; they’re all over the garden. Bring a bucket and take as many as you want. Wear gloves, though. They’re always slimier when the moon is closer to full.”

“Of course they are,” grumbled M’gann.

“Can’t help you with the checkerweed, because it’s been so dry this winter. You could probably make do with dried pumpkin seeds. Just soak them overnight in majo mizu and Bob’s your uncle.”

“And the rest?”

“I’ll go in and look, but I can’t go for a few days…”

“Right, of course. No worries. I appreciate the help.” She rubbed her eyes.

“Are you getting paid extra to fill in for Nora?”

M’gann snorted.

“Are you at least getting decent sleep?”

“Somebody, possibly Lex Luther, managed to get into this impenetrable castle. Tell me you’re sleeping well.”

Oliver shrugged. He stood and limped over to a cabinet, where he siphoned a small amount of liquid into a small hip flask and handed it to M’gann.

“What’s this, a sleeping potion? I could make that for myself.”

“Nah, those always leave you jittery in the morning. This is some of Hagrid’s homemade fire whisky. A cure for what ails you. Just a few sips and you’ll sleep like a baby.”

“Thanks, Oliver,” she said, standing. “I owe you.”

And he nodded graciously, thinking that if Nora Dahrk didn’t get back from London before next month, he might actually have to take M’gann up on that. He was fantastic in the wild. The potions lab? Not so much.

//

The next morning being a sunny Saturday, Kara woke up early, before breakfast, and hiked up to the Astronomy Tower with a little felt bag in one pocket of her robes and a wad of meticulously measured drawings by Lena and Winn in the other. She had been imagining this part of the plan for an hour a day, the way Kryptonian athletes played every game in their heads a hundred times before they ever played in the arena. She was ready.

She just really, really didn’t want anyone witnessing this on the off, off, off chance that she… wasn’t ready.

But the yellow sun was rising above the tree line and filling her with a rush of energy and confidence. She could do this. She had carved spoons as Equinox presents for all of her friends, both in Hufflepuff and the other Houses, and she was pretty much carving spoons with her laser eyes in her dreams. This would be just another spoon.

Reverently, she slid the silk wrapped package out of the pouch and drew the wrappings away. Lena had explained how, just two years before, the American wizards had managed to magically graft yew and rosewood to create a very rare, highly magical, and delightfully sweet-smelling variant of wandwood. How Professor Coulson had managed to acquire this nine-inch long block was a mystery, but Kara knew that Alex had promised the history professor any of the pieces of it that they didn’t use, so she didn’t just have to be careful with the wood that was going to be the spoon; she also couldn’t waste any of the chips or whittling that wasn’t.

So. No pressure.

In the distance, she heard the wild mating cry of unicorns from deep in the Forbidden Forest, and she took that as a good sign. Carefully, she picked up the piece of wood, lit up her eyes, and began.


	27. Missing in Action

Lena and Winn hurried into Professor Morrz's Transfiguration class, still slightly damp from running through the rain from the greenhouses back to the castle. They shared a desk, which like all the other desks had a red ceramic jug sitting on it. On the board, chalk was moving on its own to write out the instructions for transfiguring the jugs into jigsaws. 

When Winn raised his hand and asked what a jigsaw was, Morrz demonstrated the technique and they all got a look at the wooden and iron tool. She said, "This is what the Muggles used to cut elaborate shapes into wood."

"Like jigsaw puzzles?" asked Winn.

They tried the complicated wand maneuver, but nobody had much luck. Lena looked around the classroom. "I bet Kara is doing fine. Wait, where is she? She never misses class."

Professor Morrz went around the room, giving points out of twenty for how close the pairs came with their jugs. Three students had made their jugs wood, for five points each. Jess managed to make her jug wood, with a sharp metal rim, which netted her ten points. When Morrz had almost reached Lena and Winn, they were whispering frantically about Kara when Winn gestured and knocked their jug to the floor with a crash. There were pieces everywhere. The rest of the class laughed and clapped. 

Winn sighed, looking at Morrz. "I know. Zero points."

Morrz went back to her desk and got two small boxes and a bottle of Muggle glue. She smiled. "Put it back together again with all the pieces, and I'll give you full points."

//

At lunch, Alex went to sit at the Hufflepuff table, so she could talk to Nicole, who was stuffing a roast beef sandwich in her mouth with one hand and scrambling to finish her Arithmancy homework with the other.

Alex looked down the table. "Where's Kara? She loves roast beef."

Jess put down her books and reached for a sandwich. "She wasn't in Transfiguration."

Alex shrugged. "She's probably off with Lena. I'll just wrap one up in a napkin, in case she needs it later."

But then Lena and Winn came in carrying small boxes with smaller and larger pieces of a partly reconstructed red jug. Lena said, "Don't ask. Where's Kara? It's not like her to miss class, but there's no way she'd miss a meal." She put one sandwich on her plate and wrapped another in her napkin and tucked it in her bag.

Alex got the Danvers crinkle. "We should check the girls' bathrooms. She just started getting her period a few months ago and she always gets really bad cramps."

And Winn busied himself with glue and pretended he hadn't heard a word of that... girl stuff.

//

Vasquez had watched all of that exchange from her place at the Griffindor table. She frowned. She had Magical Creatures next. She would ask Professor Queen to take a fly over the Forbidden Forest. It would be just like Kara to go there to find a potion ingredient she had just read about and then get lost. Better to be safe than sorry.

//

On her way to the Astronomy Tower, Maggie saw that Nicole was walking alone, rather than being attached at the hip to Alex. Nicole seemed distracted, trying to read and walk at the same time, and just said Alex was looking for Kara, who hadn't been at lunch. She kept walking, but Maggie stopped short and James ran right into her. They both dropped all their books, and other students laughed and started clapping, but Maggie wasn't amused. As they stacked up their books, she asked James, "Where would Kara go if she were going to skip lunch?"

He frowned. "The library?"

And they were already late for class, but they stopped by the library anyway, and Mr. Giles said he hadn't seen her.

//

By dinnertime, the ClawHuffleDors were in full-blown panic mode. Max suggested that maybe Kara was working on her object project. "Have you checked the Room of Requirement?"

But Leslie Willis had joined them all at the Gryffindor table and said she had just been there with Siobhan testing their own object, so that was out.

Max asked, "How'd that go?"

"Unclear. It took her half an hour to produce a Patronus, but she's not really good at Charms. I'd be more impressed if it slowed down Sunshine Danvers. You still haven't found her yet?"

"No," growled Alex.

Everybody at the table was frowning.

"Two meals," said Vasquez.

Alex nodded. "It's time to do the unthinkable."

Maggie looked shocked. "You don't mean..."

James said, "Alex, let's not--"

"No," said Alex. "It's time to tell the teachers."


	28. When the Gloom Pervades Inside and Out

Oliver Queen sat alone at the teachers' table in the Great Hall, quietly enjoying his shepherd's pie and keeping an eye on the students. His compound bow lay on the table in front of him, but since that one time with the Slytherin boy, he'd never had to use it inside the castle.

He watched what Coulson called the ClawHuffleDors gather and hurry toward him looking a mix of confused, scared, and--in Alex and Vasquez's case--angry. Nicole Haught was not among them; she still sat at her House table with her nose in a book, frantically studying for her NEWTS.

He put down his fork as Alex stepped forward.

"Professor," she said. "We need to speak to the Headmistress."

He wiped his mouth with his linen napkin. "Ms. Danvers, Professor McGonnigle is already aware of your sister going missing. The faculty are currently engaged in Operation Sirius. Again."

"Already-- But how?"

"I told her," said Queen.

Vasquez asked, "And the Forbidden Forest? Sir?"

"I flew over it, calling her name. No luck. If she is still here, she is indoors, lucky for her."

Lena's pale face was ashen. "But if she's not?"

"Well, Ms. Luthor, to the best of my knowledge, your brother is still at large. And if he's hurt her, I'll kill him."

Lena said, "If he's hurt her, I'll let you."

Queen gave her a nod of respect. You could say what you wanted about Hufflepuffs, but with a family like hers, choosing Hufflepuff above the other three Houses must have taken a great deal of courage.

//

Astra In-Ze thought that she understood Kara Danvers better than most of her teachers. Although Astra was not "out" as an alien, she knew that the Headmistress knew that she was a Kryptonian, because McGonnigle had consulted her when Kara's name came up for admission to Hogwarts, in case the Danvers hadn't in fact done as well as they claimed at helping Kara control her powers. They needn't have bothered.

Astra was one of the few teachers who taught two subjects, Astronomy and Defense Against the Dark Arts, subjects she was uniquely expert at. And she swept her two domains, the Astronomy Tower, where she thought a homesick alien might like to look at the stars (as she sometimes did herself) and the lower level DADA classroom, where she did not expect to find Kara, but one never knew. No luck.

//

Phil Coulson would have loved to have gone to Hogwarts as a kid. This castle wasn't just historical; it was History of Magic personified, if you could say that about a building. He checked his classroom and went to the library and forced Mr. Giles to help him look very thoroughly for Kara, even though Giles said he had already looked.

"Then why on Earth didn't you tell the Headmistress she was missing?" asked Coulson, astonished.

"In my experience, students like Kara Danvers can take care of themselves. And if they want a little privacy from time to time, they deserve it."

They were going to have to agree to disagree.

//

Flitwick was flustered. He was also, short, fat, and 120 years old, so he took his broom and flew through the castle, avoiding the moving stairways and other booby traps that the castle liked to throw in the way of even the teachers now and then. The Charms classroom was clear, all of the hallways in the mid-levels were clear. He sent the Hufflepuff headgirl to check their dorm and common room, but Ms. Haught found nothing, and looked surprised that the teachers were even looking for her.

He checked the Infirmary, just in case, but Nurse Tenderloin hadn't seen her. Finally, he returned to the Headmistress's office, where all the teachers had come to report no luck to Minerva. Professor Morrz said, "Is it time to bring in the big guns?"

"You mean our frriendly neighborrhood Aurrorrs," said Minerva with an acid tone and a thick Scottish burr she got when she was upset. "No. I have to think a bit first. Don't let me keep you from your dinners. If things get... interrresting, you shall want yourr strrength."

They left and she sat down. "If it were Potter," she said to Dumbledor's picture. "Where would he be?"

Dumbledor scratched his beard thoughtfully. "I think Kara's a good deal more like Ms. Granger, wouldn't you say?"

But that didn't help. Minerva thought back to her school days, when she was studying hard and trying to manage the challenges of the TriWizard Tournament. The whole thing was stressful enough for a seventh year student. But Kara was eleven, and an alien, and apparently had the Danvers work ethic, so she was probably putting a lot of pressure on herself to excel. And if she had missed two meals and was indeed still in the castle, as Minerva was convinced she was--even the intruder had not gotten into the castle without help--then she really, really didn't want to see anyone.

Minerva got her broom and opened her window to take a shortcut to the Astronomy Tower. Unlike Astra, Minerva knew Kara's plans for shaping the wandwood, which had taken a nice chunk of change from her discretionary funds and several large favors that Coulson called in. She landed out on the top of the tower, saw a small pile of ash and a small puddle of water.

She stared out at the stars, wondering which of those bright lights might be Rao. And she thought about cats. Then she got on her broom and flew back through the castle.

//

Krypto was surprised to see Kara, because she didn't like his new playground, but he could tell that she was upset, so he let her hold him and he purred while she petted him even though her face was wet and she was getting him wet. Not that his paws were dry in the first place, but that had been by choice.

He could smell the Fierce One coming, but he stayed by Kara. She had told him Hufflepuffs had to be really loyal, and sure, he was a cat, but he was learning.

//

"Karrra," said Minerva. "Come out of the swamp, please. You've had people very worried about you."

Kara sighed deeply and carried her cat out of the Weasley Memorial Swamp. "I'm s-sorry, Professor. But they're all g-going to h-hate me!"

Minerva leaned her broom against the stone wall and sat down on the cold floor. "Come here, Kara. What happened with the wandwood? That is what this is aboot, isn't it?"

Kara nodded unhappily, still clinging to her cat. She sat down.

"Show me."

Kara pulled a spoon out of her bag, and at first it looked fine, but when Minerva took it, she saw the problem. 

"I ruined it!"

The rose colored spoon was about eight inches long and looked expertly carved, except for the round hole in the middle of the spoon's bowl. Minerva's mouth turned into a smile.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"No, dear, I'm not laughing. I'm remembering my grandmother's house in Caithness. Her kitchen was red and yellow, with roosters embroidered into the curtains. And she had a spoon just like this. Do you know what this is, Kara? It's a spurtle."

"A spurtle? Are you making that up?"

"Noo, it is a Scottish invention, much like the Muggle's steam engine. Scots are inventive. The problem with regular spoons, when you are stirring sauces, is that it is easy for the sauce to slop out of the pan as you stir. But with a hole like this, the sauce passes through and it doesn't spill."

"But you can't eat with it."

"No, but you hadn't been intending to, had you? Wasn't the purpose a tool to make potions stronger?"

"I guess? We've been so busy trying to make it, the purpose got a little lost."

Minerva nodded. "That happens. But what you've done here might be the very thing that makes your object work, Kara. Lintel magic is an old field, and it barely gets taught anymore, but it is about the magic of the in-between places, doorways, dusk and dawn. If your potion isn't just being stirred by the spoon like you might stir it with a wand, if instead it is repeatedly going through the spoon, from one side to the other, that might turn out to be very powerful thing indeed."

"You're not just saying that?"

"I'm the Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Ms. Danvers. I know a thing or two about magic and I would never lie to a student about the magical arts."

Kara let Krypto go and he sat on the floor licking his toes. "I think I'm really hungry."

"Then let's get you back to your House. I imagine if you ask the House Elves nicely, they'll let you have some sandwiches. But your sister and your friends have been worrying themselves sick. You need to talk to them first."

"Thank you, Professor. I'm sorry I bothered everybody. C'mon, Krypto. Let's go."

Minerva watched her hurry off with her cat at her heels, following her like a little dog. Then she put her broomstick over her shoulder and walked back to her office, feeling good about a job well done.


	29. Apologies and Good News

Vasquez, Sara, and Ava were already in the Hufflepuff common room when Kara arrived with Krypto, and they watched as Alex and Kara hugged hard, until Alex gasped for breath. Lena hugged her next and lasted maybe ten seconds longer before gasping. Kara was more careful with Maggie and Jess. Then she turned to the Griffindor crew and held her arms open. Sara gave her a quick hug, followed by Ava. Vasquez just frowned at her.

"Um, Vasquez?"

"WHERE WERE YOU?" asked Vasquez. "We looked EVERYWHERE. We thought you had been kidnapped by Lex Luthor!"

She stopped suddenly, looking sheepish, then said, "Okay, I thought that. I get that you wouldn't have, Lena."

Lena shrugged. "Oh, no. I thought that. He really disapproves of our friendship. You're fine." She turned back to Kara. "But she's right, you know. You really had us worried. You skived off class, you skipped lunch, and you even skipped dinner! Oh! That reminds me. We brought sandwiches back from lunch, just in case..."

Kara's eyes shone. "You guys are the BEST!"

Alex handed her a sandwich and sat her down on one of the squishy couches. "But seriously, Kara, where were you? What happened?"

Kara started to talk with her mouth full. "Wl, th spndnt turnot thwy I plnd."

"Chew, swallow. Start again," said Alex tiredly, as if it was something she'd had to say often.

Kara swallowed. "The spoon didn't turn out the way I planned. I had... an accident... when I was carving the wandwood..."

Ava said, "Yeah, I was planning on asking, how did you manage that without a dragon?"

Sara, who had a few ideas about that topic, said, "Yeah, babe, this is not the time. We'll talk. What kind of accident, Kara?"

Kara pulled the spoon out of her bag. At the sight of the hole in the bowl of the spoon, everyone made disappointed noises.

Kara said, "I know, right? I was convinced I'd ruined it, and I know how hard it was to get and how much was riding on my getting it right, and I figured you'd all hate me for ruining our one chance at getting the points, because our House hasn't won the House Cup for years and years and years!"

Maggie said, "You're... using past tense..." It was not entirely a question.

"Well, Professor McGonnigle found me in the Weasley Swamp and I showed her what I'd done and she said that it wasn't a spoon I'd made but a spurtle, which is apparently a Scottish sauce spoon that doesn't let you spill the sauce over the edge of the pot, and she thought that, um, lintel magic? Something like that. In-between places like doors are extra magical and if the spoon-thing doesn't just move the sauce, or the potion around, but the potion passes through it..."

Ava said, "Shit! Lintel magic is old! Like Founders old. Liminal spaces are hugely magical."

Sara looked at her Ravenclaw girlfriend fondly. "You are such a nerd."

Kara continued, "Professor McGonnigle said that it might actually make it work better."

"But why the swamp?" asked Jess. "It's icky."

"No, it's not. It's nice. And Krypto goes there sometimes to hunt and I needed to be with him because I knew he was the one person who wouldn't hate me!"

Alex hugged her again. "I wouldn't hate you and I'm pretty sure that your Hufflepuff friends wouldn't have hated you."

They all chimed in.

But Kara still looked upset. "But Alex, if I screwed this up, Mom would have sent you another of those horrible red envelopes--"

Vasquez said, "We would have handled it. The point is, don't scare us like that."

Winn hugged Kara as hard as he could. "We could never hate you, Kara. You're pretty much unhateable."

More hugs. More forgiveness. It was good to have friends like these.


	30. Postcards from the Ledge of the Owlery

Abdul few from Cairo to London, a shorter trip than he had been told to expect. The note he carried read:

Dearest Nora, I haven’t heard from you in some time. Our research is going well. The Egyptian Ministry of Magic and Algebra approved our request to search King Calculus-Attenmak’s tomb for signs of the earliest Werepeople. Mona, reading through the archives, is coming to terms with her new identity. I miss you terribly. Love, Ray.

Abdul had been instructed to await a reply, but he was pretty sure that the recipient was going to be asleep long enough so that Abdul could go to the East End and take in a show. “The Birds” was playing, after all.

//

Mulan flew from Ilvermorny to London (not Scotland as she usually did), and was frisked (and given owl treats) when she reached the Ministry of Magic. Her letter was also scrupulously read before it reached its recipient, but she had been told to expect that. Didn’t matter. Professor May always wrote in code as a matter of course.

Dear Bobbi, Glad to hear you are settling in at the London office. Wish I could say I was. The old castle’s plumbing leaks more than I recall, and the kids are tracking water everywhere. We have a new teacher subbing in Cryptomancy, and she wears a tie under her robes—and not her House tie: it’s a Beebo pattern! The next time you’re up north, pick me up some McDonogh’s, will you? The scotch here sucks. See you at the June conference? –May.

Mulan’s recipient told her the reply would take a while, so she headed over to the East End. “The Birds” was playing. She had time to take in a show.

//

Zainab flew from Cairo to the Black Forest, where her recipient was investigating an investigation that (he told her) he thought had been shady, incomplete, and then redacted by the German Ministry of Magic officials. She had to peck his bald head to get him to stop talking long enough to read the message.

Dear Mick, You were right about getting used to it. And Ray has been so sweet! We found ancient Niffler bones in the funerary room, wrapped around golden replicas of food and drink. So sad!! We tried to take them out so we could carbon date them, but it triggered some necromantic curse—very messy. Do you have any idea where John is? This would be right up his alley. Hope you’re well!!! Love—Mona.

The man growled, but then he scribbled a short reply and sent her back. Just as well. Germany was too damp for Zainab’s blood.

//

Jurgen didn’t work much these days, at least not since he’d been assigned to that grumpy Curse-Breaker. But suddenly, he found himself with a short note and enough money to take the Post Owl ship across the Atlantic, deliver his note to the fastest man alive, and almost immediately carry a reply back to Berlin. Verdammt! thought Jurgen. He’d hoped to be close enough to Chicago to take in a show. He’d heard the Sharpes were killing it in the remake of "The Cursed Child."

// 

Beatrice flew from Beauxbattons to Durmstrang, grateful not to have to cross oceans anymore; she got très mal de mer every time she’d had to cross the pond in the past. But age brought with it some privileges at least. Professor Grant had sent Benedict to Ilvermorny instead of her. She coasted on the breeze down to the gloomy castle, flying into the Great Hall to find the Professor of Magical Camouflage and drop the message into his pumpkin juice, eat some of his waffle as he read the message.

Lancelot, darling, Do you remember that bit of research I did for you a while back on our mutual friend? Well, his minion has been seen on Elba dealing in some questionable potion ingredients, which are marginally legal here, but not back home. You’ll want your opposite numbers to keep their eyes open, and you may need to liaise up north. And I’m thinking there’s a bit of a clock on this, so chop chop! My best—Cat.

Professor Hunter swore under his breath, but kindly suggested that Beatrice fly to the Owlery to await his reply. She agreed and took off. When Benedict came to Durmstrang, he usually took time out to see a show, but Beatrice had been turned off to theater by that horrible musical, “Cats.” She would rather take a nap instead.

//

Melinda May picked up her teacup just in time to avoid having the French owl drop his message into it. She scooped it out of her omelet instead—at least grease didn’t make the ink unreadable. Thwarted, the young bird hooted in a way that managed to sound embarrassed, and she shooed him off to the Owlery. She read Cat’s note with interest. The spell Cat had found in Beauxbatton’s archives had been invented by Leticia Luthor probably a hundred years before, when it had been considered impossible, but Cat’s research into the Philosophy of Magic and her wide reading interests suggested that this was no longer true. She advised that May read the Doctors Danvers' most recent paper on nuclear-fuelled vibration of certain traditional potion ingredients inducing short-term heightened magical actuation. She thought such technology could make the Luthor’s spell work. And since Cat knew that May knew someone in that field, maybe they could experiment? And although Professor May was one of the only people in the world that Cat Grant absolutely never said “Chop chop” to, still a sense of urgency was in fact conveyed. May growled a little noise of contentment. She knew that Professor Johnson was looking for a side project. This might be just the thing…


	31. When Hufflepuffs Have Your Back

Kara was in the library, struggling to write her History of Magic essay about the Goblin Wars. Writing, especially in English, was not her favorite thing, but Winn had promised to check her spelling, so she soldiered on. At one point, she got up to find a book, and she heard what sounded like tears and as she got closer she realized that the tears sounded like her sister’s. She hurried around the corner to find her sister in the Renaissance section sitting on the floor, trying to muffle the sound of her sobs in the sleeve of her black robes.

“Alex!” whispered Kara. “What’s wrong?” She sat down next to her and put her arms around her.

“N-nicole broke up with me!”

“But why? You guys were doing so well together!”

“She said she has to study for NEWTS and we were just spending too much time together and her grades were going down. So now she has to refocus!”

“Oh, Alex! That’s terrible. You seemed so happy!”

“I was! And now, I, I’m…” she sobbed. “I’m such a failure.”

“No! You are not a failure. She is! She’s a gosh-darn horrible failure person!”

Kara was nothing if not a supportive little sister.

//

When the rest of the Hufflepuffs heard what Nicole Haught had done to Kara’s big sister, whom they all held in awe, there was a major scene in the Hufflepuff dorm, and Nicole ran off crying to her best friend in Ravenclaw, and wasn’t seen at the Hufflepuff dining table for a week. 

After all, the whole point of being a Hufflepuff was loyalty.

//

On a beautiful Saturday in late March, Sara and Ava were walking along the lake, holding hands and trying to identify the birds fluttering around the trees and singing loudly. Sara was doing most of the work, naming the yellow-throated fizzle finch, who made an odd fizzing sound almost like a shaken can of Muggle soda pop, and the green-bellied jingle jay, who jingled, before realizing that Ava had fallen silent.

"Babe, what is it?" Sara asked.

"I just feel bad for Nicole. I mean yes, she dropped a bomb on Alex, who did not deserve that, and also even before that, she wasn't any help when we were all running around the castle frantically looking for Kara. But to be fair, she was worried about her grades."

"...says the fellow Ravenclaw."

"Yeah, I know. The Houses really shape us, don't they?"

"Only if we let them. I think it depends on who you surround yourself with and what the circumstances are. In Harry Potter's years here, he pretty much turned everyone around him into Gryffindors. We're... more eclectic."

"Eclectic? Seriously Lance?"

"It's from that word-a-day calendar you got me for Christmas. You like?"

"So a Ravenclaw is rubbing off on a Gryffindor? Excellent!" She rubbed her hands together. "My evil plan is working!"

They heard what sounded like a loud, wet fart, and whipped around. "Max Lord!" shouted Sara. "That was not funny!" 

But Ava just pointed to a plump orange and brown speckled bird drinking water from the lake edge. "Sorry, babe. That's not Maxy. It's a fart fowl."

//

With the Hufflepuffs having shunned their own Head Girl, the Slytherins decided to forgive Max for turning in John Corbin, in part because Max was in many ways their fearless leader and also because they had really been enjoying teasing John about Owl poop. They had to show their gratitude to Max somehow.

Also, they could tell that they were so, so close to getting the SpellStopper to work, and they really needed his devious brain.

//

Nicole Haught realized that she had treated Alex badly, but at least all of the teachers were starting the usual nagging about the OWLS and NEWTS that were coming up, so that helped put her bad decision into a better context. And she also noted that Maggie and Vasquez were more than happy to take Alex's mind off her ex, so even if she had wanted to go back and apologize and ask Alex to take her back--and she would have liked to, really, except the NEWTS really were causing her regular nightmares--well, that ship had sailed.

//

Maggie was training the Hufflepuff team at least twice a week for two hours at a time, because that was the most she could get the pitch for in advance. And her team was crushing it. Jess was the best Beater they'd had since the Potter years, not to mention how Kara caught Snitches the rest of the team couldn't see until the wings were bent in her hands.

Alex and the Gryffindors were trying to balance their OWLS studies with their Quidditch, and still waiting for the plant to finish its crocheting itself into the heavy scarlet wool sweater that Lucy had constructed.

The Ravenclaws were letting Nicole Haught eat and hang out with them as they all studied harder than the other three Houses combined, in a kind of Study Buddy Solidarity.

And Max Lord, who had (ostensibly) learned his lesson about cheating at Quidditch, had been reading nonstop to figure out a way to cheat acceptably at the object project, in a way that the rules would accept.

As the Friar said to Nearly Headless Nick, the children were pretty much all playing to their strengths.


	32. Extending Our Investigations

Luna Lovegood was a firm believer in what Sir Terry Pratchett would have referred to as substitions: things that nobody believed in that were, however, true. One of these things was serendipity. So after a long day of staring at the Murder Board she'd put together for the old man who had been killed at the Port a few days before, and checking in via her office fireplace with Elena Sandoval in Hogsmeade on how that investigation was going, she decided it was time to call it a day.

Then her Muggle girlfriend had texted about the special food for their elderly owl, so she made a side trip to Diagon Alley and was just stepping out of the Owl Emporium, when she saw the back of a head she had been staring at for days, bald, with a battered brown fedora, and she automatically pulled up the hood of her duffel coat and followed him...

Directly down Knockturn Alley. He didn't even have the decency to look around furtively before he entered Borgin and Burkes.

Luna passed the store, unobtrusively dropping one end of the latest version of the Weasley Extendable Ears and stood at the other end of the street, pretending to scroll through her phone as she listened in to the conversation in the store.

"I'm telling you, Mr. Thorul, the spoon we found in Moscow was a bust. Yes, it had belonged to Bonaparte, but there was no magic in it."

Luna clicked record on her phone. The conversation wouldn't be admissable in court, but every little bit helped if it meant she knew where to look for something else that would be.

"Mr. Burke, your incompetence is only matched by your lack of enthusiasm for one of the last great magical mysteries. Your retainer is about to run out at the end of the month. If you don't have any better news, I shall certainly let it."

"One more month, sir. I've heard that our Kyoto office recently acquired the estate of a very old Slytherin family, exiled from England since our Civil War..."

"One more month. And it had better be worth. My. While."

From the corner of her eye, Luna saw a very angry Lex Luthor step out of the shop, letting the door slam behind him.

Very interesting, she thought as he passed her only a few feet away. She rolled up the extendable ears and went home with a new set of questions.

//

Elena Sandoval had been a Gryffindor in her time at Hogwarts, but she was very proud of her niece being in Hufflepuff, especially after she talked to her friends. She had waited until the kids had a Hogsmeade weekend and treated the 'Puffs to butterbeers at the Three Broomsticks and asked them how they liked school.

Winn was enthusiastic about all his friends, explaining that as a geek and a nerd and a wizard who couldn't admit it in the Muggle world, he had never done well in Muggle schools, being bullied a lot.

"I mean," he said, "I'm still bullied here sometimes, but these guys have my backs, and since Kara joined our House, the Gryffindors stick up for us too, and those guys are fierce!"

Kara blushed. "Yeah, Alex says she's sorry that she never noticed before."

Jess said, "Vasquez always noticed. She was like the Bully Avenger! Remember when she broke that seventh-year's nose? He was practically a foot taller than her!"

Elena hid a smile. "Yes, Maggie told me about that..." She turned to Lena. "How about you? Maggie says you're the best in your Potions class."

Lena frowned slightly. "I like Potions because it requires you to be very precise. Put the ingredients in the wrong way and it won't work. Stir it in the wrong direction and it won't work. But if you do everything exactly right, it just cannot possibly go wrong. I think very few things in life are like that."

Elena nodded, sighing. "You're right about that. I often wish my job were more like that. And our burden of proof is much higher than it is in Muggle Law Enforcement. We don't want to wrongfully imprison anybody. I've seen Azkaban. It's part of our training. So we take evidence collecting as seriously as we should."

"And do you think it was my brother who got into the castle?"

"I honestly don't know. And I still haven't got the crime scene analysis back from Magic Tech in London..." Suddenly her Muggle phone went off. She looked at the screen and stood. "Sorry, kids, gotta take this. I'll just be a minute."

She stepped outside. "Luna? What is it?"

"We need you back in London."

"Has Darhk woken up?"

"No, but she's been talking in her sleep."

"So?"

"About Lex Luthor."

//

When Luna returned to her office, Elena Sandoval was stepping out of Luna's fireplace, brushing ash off her trenchcoat.

Luna looked distracted. "Oh, sorry about that. I haven't let facilities get in here to clean. If it is Lex we're looking at, and I'm now pretty sure it is, we can't risk a potential mole leaking him information on our investigation."

Elena frowned. "You think there's a mole?"

"No, and I have all of our department regularly checked for the Imperius Curse, but it pays to be cautious. Lex is no Lord V, but he's still someone I don't want to underestimate." She handed her a small scroll. "These are some places in the castle you might want to look at again, and that's the name of Darhk's owl. We can't get subpoenas for the owl or her office or rooms, per se, not until we have some corroborating evidence that we could actually use. Right now all we have is basically hearsay. See what you can find."

"Have the Magic Techs reported back?"

"They hadn't as of this morning, but you should go down and ask. They have a backlog, of course. When do they not? And of course it's always worse around the full moon."

Elena walked over to the board. "Who is this guy? The Portmaster? You think he's connected?"

"I got a tip about some smuggling of controlled magical substances entering England by sea, but when we got there, he was freshly dead. And I am a firm non-believer in coincidences."

Elena worked hard not to look at her boss's radish earrings. She knew about the wrackspurts. It was better not to say anything. Besides, she was right about the lack of coincidences in murder investigations, especially when magic was involved.

"Anything else?"

Luna sighed. "How are the students?"

"Resilient. Lena looks tired, but her friends are Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors. They have her back."

"That's good. I know all too well what it's like when people look at you funny at school."

And Elena thought, yes, you would because, well, wrackspurts.

But Luna continued, "It was always so hard for Harry, all those years when people didn't believe him..." She got a faraway look in her eyes.

And Elena thought, oh, yeah, she was one of the Potter generation, one of Potter's best friends. Elena turned back to the board, to where a red string led to a note about Lex Luthor looking for an enchanted spoon. "A spoon?"

"Yes, it's just something I overheard him say in Knockturn Alley a day or two ago, quite by accident."

"You're sure it was him?"

"I am. I just don't know if it's important."

Elena sat down abruptly. "Um... Luna, have you heard about the project that Professors McGonnigle and Flitwick came up with? The contest for the students?"

"No, I don't have children myself, so I don't keep up with what goes on at the school."

"Do you have five minutes? Because this might become... pertinent at some point..."


	33. Bringing In the Big... Not-Guns

Bobbi Morse, Auror, had never actually visited Hogwarts before and she was privately happy to finally get the chance, even if it was only in the interest of liaising with Elena Sandoval, as Melinda May had suggested. One of her new colleagues at the Ministry insisted that she should make reservations at the Three Broomsticks, not “that other place” and when Bobbi Apparated into Hogsmeade, she immediately saw why that was a good call. Besides, that was where Elena Sandoval was making her ersatz headquarters for her continued investigation of the intruder at the castle.

The innkeeper gave her Room 33, a few doors down from Sandoval’s room. She dropped her gear in her room and then went and knocked on the door of 38.

“Come in!” said a harassed voice.

Bobbi stepped in to see Elena, who was a bit of a legend at Magical Law Enforcement, having been at the FBI’s magical branch for years before she transferred to England. Her high bald fade, necktie and suspenders (no, braces, Bobbi reminded herself) were a familiar sight as her robes whipped behind her as she hurried through the hallways. But Bobbi had never actually met her up close.

“Agent Sandoval,” she said. “I’m Bobbi Morse.”

The woman shook her hand with a firm, sure grip. “Elena. Glad you could make it. This is what we’ve got so far.”

Across the back of the room stood a broad cork board, and even as she watched Elena flicked her wand and several surveillance photos rearranged themselves on the board and red string linked them. They all showed what appeared to be the same bald man furtively entering Gringotts, the London Port Authority, and the Hog’s Head pub right there in Hogsmeade.

“Can we conclude that it’s Lex?”

“Not definitively. The Magic Tech people think whoever it is was using Concelio on the surveillance devices. But I’ve taken samples of the ash in Professor Darhk’s fireplace and sent them to London’s MT people. If anybody can pull evidence out of it, it’s them. I was just there yesterday and Luna got them to move it up on their to-do list.”

“What do you need from me?”

“Professor McGonnigle has told me that a lot of these kids want to be Aurors when they grow up. You are going to go in as a Career Day speaker, to talk about your work in the States—British kids love the States—and then have meals with them, encourage questions, challenge their ability to observe…”

“Get them to tell me about anything odd they’ve seen going on in the castle.”

“Yes, but unofficially. I’ve been asking official questions. I’ve talked to all the professors, and to the kids who interacted with him, Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers.”

Bobbi whistled. “The sister? Bet she didn’t see a thing.”

Elena made a face. “She didn’t, but to be fair, he knocked her over. I saw the bruise on her forehead. Kara said she thought the man was bald but that’s it. If it helps, my niece thinks they’re telling the truth. It seems the kids in the other houses keep an eye on the Daily Prophet, to warn Lena when he’s in the news, because that makes the Slytherins bully her.”

“Kids are crap sometimes.”

“Agent Morse—”

“Sorry, I got bullied as a kid too. That’s when I started studying stick-fighting.”

“Hmm. Maybe we can get you to give a demonstration of that for the school?”

“Are you volunteering to be my sparring partner?”

“Hardly. I’m more of a wands or fists kinda gal myself. I was thinking about Professor In-Ze, the DADA teacher.”

“I’ll ask her. Anything else you need me to do?”

“I’ve heard you’re good at Cryptomancy. We found what looks like a diary dropped in the kitchen. It didn't belong to any of the House Elves, but it’s encrypted and I can’t hack it.”

“Ooh. I’m all over it. Darhk still hasn’t come to at St. Mungo’s.”

“No, but the Healers tell me she’s been talking about Lex in her sleep. Unfortunately, that’s not admissible evidence. We have to find proof.”

//

The Career Day Lecture happened in the free period before dinner. Lena skipped it, needing to work on her Potions homework, but Alex, Maggie, Vasquez, Kara and Winn made sure to get front-row seats, and saved places for James and Lucy, who were late due to needing to feed their owls.

Sara and Ava sat behind them and heard what they were saying. Sara said, “Ha! Owls. You know they’re up there necking.”

Maggie made a face. Privately, Sara thought Maggie had a crush on Lucy, but she didn’t say anything. She settled in to listen to the American talk about her work at the Magic Department at SHIELD and her work more recently in London, learning how the British handled Magical Law Enforcement. She mentioned several cases she had finished recently, including one where magical artifacts stolen abroad had ended up smuggled into England and used to try to rob Gringotts Bank. 

After talking and taking questions, the woman told them that their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had agreed to help her with a demonstration. Professor In-Ze came to the stage and took off her black robe to reveal a black body suit underneath it. Bobbi stepped forward and whipped her batons out. The speed with which In-Ze flew at Morse was matched by Morse as she whipped around her batons twirling and landing on In-Ze’s arms, shoulders and back, flipping over her, and twirling her around to land on her back on the stage, with Morse’s batons crossed at her throat. She tapped out and both stood to a round of raucous applause from the students.

Morse grinned. In-Ze rubbed her arm ruefully. Then the whole school poured in to dinner.

//

Up at the teachers’ table, Coulson told In-Ze that he had some Tiger’s Balm for her bruises, and they chatted intermittently as they watched Agent Morse eat her dinner with the Ravenclaws, her dessert with the Hufflepuffs, and then follow the Gryffindors back to their dorm.

Flitwick asked, “You don’t suppose she’s, what’s the American phrase? Shaking them down for information.”

In-Ze snorted. “Of course.”

Coulson nodded. “It’s what I would do.”

“Good,” said Flitwick. “Maybe we can get to the bottom of this at last."


	34. The Chapter after That

Maggie had recognized her Aunt Elena's facial expression just before her sudden departure after the phone call. It suggested the woman expected to be working overtime, and couldn’t decide whether that would be a good thing or bad. She listened to her friends tell her how badass her aunt’s haircut was, and how nice she was, and how surely she would solve the case…

All of which Maggie knew.

She was more concerned about Lena, and she could tell that Kara was too. Kara lagged behind the others as they walked back to the castle at the end of the day, and Maggie dropped back to walk with her. “Hey, Little Danvers. Talk to me.”

“It was Lex, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Who else would have a reason to break into Hogwarts?” asked Kara.

“But why would anybody break into the kitchen?” asked Maggie reasonably.

“Well, but if he was looking for something in the Potions lab first, wouldn’t the kitchen be the next place to look for ingredients?”

“Sure, if he’s planning world domination through basil.”

“What if it has something to do with the House Elves?”

“Then why go to Potions and attack Professor Darhk?” asked Maggie.

They crossed the bridge with the stone flying pigs, destroyed during the Battle of Hogwarts and lovingly replaced. Maggie brushed her hand over one, wishing for a better outcome than she could foresee of all this confusion.

Quietly, Maggie asked, “What if Darhk was working with Lex, secretly?”

Kara stopped short. “A professor would never do—Except some did, didn’t they, in Harry Potter’s time…”

Maggie remembered that Kara had read the revised Hogwarts: A History twelve times. She said, “Lena told us that she saw her brother’s owl deliver mail to Darhk at breakfast that time.”

“Could you identify an owl you knew from a distance? I’m not sure I could.”

“Well, my aunt would say that it wouldn’t stand up in court, but I trust Lena. And didn’t she say she went to the Owlery to check?”

“But then why would he hurt Darhk?”

“Maybe they had a falling out. Criminals fight sometimes. Maybe she refused to do something he asked her to do. Or maybe he meant to make it look like they fought, but he hit her too hard with a spell.”

They entered the Great Hall and took their place at their House table. Lena had saved them both seats. She took one look at their faces and said, “Discussing my brother’s criminal activity?"

“Alleged criminal activity,” said Maggie. “There’s no proof it was him.”

Lena sighed. “I’ve given up that particular hope. I just hope he doesn’t implicate the company. Mother expects me to go to Oxford after Hogwarts, and that won’t be cheap.”

Maggie squeezed Lena’s shoulder. Alex and Vasquez came over to sit with them with plates piled high with fish and chips, still talking excitedly about the Career Day talk and fight demonstration. Alex waved around a small piece of parchment.

“Ms. Morse wrote down a whole bunch of books about doing Auror work for me to read over the summer!”

Winn laughed. “You’re like Lena, always looking to do more homework. I can barely keep up with the homework we have!”

Kara chewed and swallowed dutifully, then said, “I was surprised about the smell thing.”

They all stared. “The smell thing?” asked Alex.

“Yeah," said Kara, looking a little embarrassed. "She asked me about what the kitchen smelled like that night, when whoever it was—”

“Lex,” said Lena tiredly.

“Whoever it was,” repeated Kara fiercely. “And I thought that was weird, because we had chowder that night for dinner, but I remember smelling barbecue sauce, but also coffee…”

Lena’s jaw dropped. Then she rubbed her eyes and stood. “Excuse me, please.” With a determined look on her face, she marched up to the teachers’ table, and after speaking a few words with the Headmistress, Professor McGonnigle stood up and together they strode out of the Great Hall.

“What did I say?” asked Kara.

But Maggie said, “Oh, that can’t be good.”

//

Bobbi and Elena were startled from their work in Elena’s hotel room by an owl tapping at their window. Elena opened it and took the note, saying, “Bobbi, there are owl treats on the bedside table. Would you mind?”

Bobbi fed the owl and it perched on the headboard, probably waiting for a reply.

“Bobbi,” said Elena slowly, “Have you ever heard of Kopi Luwak barbecue sauce?”

“Um, no?”

“Have you heard about civet coffee?”

“Yeah, isn’t that the one where they feed coffee beans to civets so their digestive system partially breaks down the bean’s outer skin and then they poop it out?”

“Got it in one. Turns out there is an extremely expensive barbecue sauce made with that coffee. A sauce favored by an ultra-rich criminal genius.”

Bobbi’s jaw dropped. “Lex Luthor?”

“You asked Kara Danvers about smells.”

“I did, but her answer made no sense.”

“Because Lena didn’t hear Kara’s answer. Until just now.” She grinned, and Bobbi thought that look didn’t bode well for Lex Luthor. “I was right to bring you in. You think of things differently than I do.”

She scribbled a short note on the back of the note the owl had brought them and said, “Return this to the Headmistress. Thank you.”

The owl flew back out into the cool evening air, and Elena closed the window behind him.

“Time to pack it in, Bobbi. We’re going home and we are going to find Lex, and stop whatever it is he’s doing.”


	35. Thank You for Your Cooperation

When Nora woke, her mouth was dry and her vision was blurry. “Water…”

She heard the sound of water being poured, and a soft female voice said, “Just sit up a little, that’s right.”

Nora’s vision cleared to show her a middle aged blonde woman with--wait, radishes?--dangling from her ears. She wore a trenchcoat and an old Ravenclaw tie and she supported Nora’s back as she sipped at the water, then let her lay back down again.

“Professor Dahrk, my name is Luna Lovegood, and I am an Auror. And I’d like to say, did you know that you talk in your sleep? Admittedly, we hadn’t had any clue that Lex Luthor had a mole at Hogwarts, but since you did us the favor of letting us know that, we’ve gone back and gathered the evidence that you have indeed been working with him from afar. Between using the Floo network for unauthorized travel for a Person Under Inquisition, to smuggled potion ingredients into Azkaban… Let’s just say that the charges that we are considering for you are a long list. Professor McGonnigle is most displeased, as you can imagine, although she has suggested that you might have been doing some of these things under duress, and might be amenable to working with the Ministry of Magical Law Enforcement for special considerations…”

Nora thought about her father, and her dark past. She thought about the difference between the American prison at the Time Bureau, which was a walk in the park compared to Azkaban. The British didn’t mess around when it came to criminal wizards. The decision was easy.

“Lex Luthor,” she began, took a deep breath, and finished, “is looking for Helga Hufflepuff’s lost spoon.”

//

Daisy Johnson returned to the Ilvermorny castle late after helping coach Quidditch practice. She hurried into the Great Hall for dinner and found an empty seat next to Professor Allen, who disappeared and then reappeared with a tray full of food for her. Above them, the house banners blew back in his wind.

"Dude, you didn't have to get me dinner--"

"Don't let Professor May hear you call anybody dude. She hates that. Also, she wants to see you after dinner, and I'd hurry if I were you. She had that look."

"Which look? The kill-you-with-hate-fu look? The gonna-enjoy-killing-you-slowly look? The you're-such-a--" she lowered her voice "fuckwit look?"

"Nope, not those looks. You know, more the oh-now-I-have-a-new-weapon-to-play-with look."

"Really?" Daisy ate faster. She didn't know what was worse: having to eat mac and cheese made by House Elves who didn't know how to make cheese not taste like glue, or possibly grading thirty papers written by fifteen-year-olds about Technomancy they didn't fully understand. Helping May with a new weapon would be a delightful distraction from her work this weekend.

After dinner, she made her way to Professor May's study, where she found the woman surrounded by several dusty old leather books and a shiny recent issue of The Journal of Covariate Technomancy.

"Wait! May! How do you have the next issue already? It's not supposed to be out until next month!"

"I asked the Danvers for an early copy and they very generously sent it to me." She handed it to Daisy.

Daisy sat down and opened it to the place marked with a piece of parchment that said, "Melinda, Jeremiah said to give you any help you need. He sends his regards. --Eliza."

Daisy goggled at May. "Wait, you know the Doctors Danvers?"

"Jeremiah consulted with SHIELD for a few years. He's good people. I never actually met his wife, but Coulson has only good things to say about their daughters at Hogwarts. Do me a favor and read that article and tell me if those theoretical things they're saying would be possible and whether we could test them in reality."

Daisy sat in a rather cozy, stuffed armchair, reading with increasing excitement. "May, that's, that's so next level..."

May said, "They got time at CERN to hypervibrate the ingredients for the Confusing Concoction and the rats were still acting a bit drunk a week later."

Daisy kept reading. "But if we could, that's not possible. But if--" She turned a page, kept reading. "HOLY--" Her eyes were huge. "But I could do that!"

"That's what I was hoping you'd say."

//

John Constantine had never particularly liked Cairo. Hot weather always reminded him of hell, and quite frankly, he'd just rather not. When he got off the plane, he hurried through the airport, craving a cigarette, but he wouldn't be able to light up until he got outside. Luckily, Ray Palmer was standing with a sign as soon as John got his bag, and they got into Ray's rental.

"Good to see you, squire," said John, pulling out a cigarette and his lighter. "So you're having a necromancy problem, I hear."

"We are! But don't light up in the car! I'll lose my deposit!"

John lit up anyway. "I've been on a bleeding plane for twelve hours. Trust me. You want me to get some nicotine in my system if we're dealing with spirits of the deepest darkness."

"Well, not spirits exactly. Not precisely spirits."

"What then?" asked John, taking a long appreciative drag on his cigarette.

"Um, walking skeletons?"

John sighed. "Skeletons."

"Um, yup?"

"All right, then, squire, swing by the northwest bazaar. I'm going to need some extra... special ingredients."

//

Auror Gary Greene was very excited. He had wanted to work with the Magical Division of Interpol his whole career. When Luna Lovegood, the Auror from London, and Mick Rory, the Curse-Breaker from Berlin stepped out of his fireplace, he nearly squeed. Luckily, working for Rip Hunter for so long had taught him some important lessons, all of which he had written down and stuck with a magnet to his refrigerator back home. Lesson #3 was "Legends Don't Squee."

"Hello, fellow Aurors!" he said. "Welcome to the Manhattan Precinct of Magical Law Enforcement. How can I help you?"

Rory grunted, but Lovegood said, "We have a problem. It looks like an American national hexed the brooms of three Durmstrang students, got them lost in the Black Forest and nearly killed by warthogs, and we think he had motive. We would like to ask for your cooperation to bring him to justice."

Gary frowned, working hard at Lesson #3. He said, "Anything I can do to help!"

//

Bobbi Morse took the journal with her back to London and sat in Luna’s office to work on cracking the code. It looked like a running key cipher, but without knowledge of what book the key was taken from, she had no way of deciphering it. The only non-text entries in the small leather book were of a flat-bowled spoon with an oddly shaped handle-end and the (apparently) uncoded “1597, London” in green ink beneath the sketch; a snake eating what looked like a porcupine; and a pentagon apparently in flames. She explained to Luna that the last one probably had to do with Lex’s hatred of Superman. Luna crossed one more thing off a two-foot long parchment list of questions.

//

It wasn’t the way May would have thought to do it, but it made the House Elves happy, and as Daisy pointed out, it was probably their most humane option. The two of them Apparated to the desert just south of Salt Lake City with their wands, Daisy’s gloves, and two jars, one filled with cockroaches and the other filled with cowbane and daisies. May set the flora on a flat stone and stood back while Daisy let loose her quaking powers on them. 

“Try it now. Did you bring the unfinished Shrinking Solution?” she asked.

“Of course.” May added the shaken apart plants to a flask she carried, stoppered it, and shook it gently while Daisy let loose the cockroaches and cast Engorgio on them until they were the size of armadillos. “Here we go.” She unstoppered the flask carefully and then poured the potion over the enlarged bugs. With a sizzle, they shrank down to the size of ants. One poofed into oblivion.

“Um, May?” said Daisy with a wavering voice. “Don’t…get any of that on your hands…”


	36. Wherein Many Are Tested

The following week, all the Houses were studying in every free moment they could find, and Nicole Haught sprained her ankle trying to read and walk down stairs that decided to shift at the last moment. She showed up at the Infirmary, carried by James, and Nurse Tenderloin waved her wand and snapped that the next time the Hufflepuff hurt herself study-walking, the woman was just going to hand her crutches and let her experience the pain Muggles felt when they engaged in such stupidity.

In the Gryffindor dorm, Lucy complained that she could hear Alex reciting the sixteen uses of henbane in her sleep, and Alex turned bright red, and changed the subject. “Um, Lu, I was just looking at the sweater armor. Winn’s plant seems to have finished weaving itself into it, but I don’t know what the next step is…”

And James and Vasquez joined them at the south window of the dorm tower and contemplated the two plants that had been crocheting themselves into the sweater. James asked, “How do we get them detached from the sweater without harming them?”

Lucy said, “Well, I got it to learn how to crochet by talking to it, so… Um, plants? You can stop now, if you like… Also, um, thank you?”

With the sound like a little sigh, the vines connecting to the plant snapped off. The sweater stood on the little mannequin they had found in the Room of Requirement, looking like a very leafy piece of autumn camouflage. Alex and Vasquez pulled it off the mannequin and set it on the floor. Vasquez went to Alex’s desk, and pulled the biggest book out of her pile of books, the revised Hogwarts: A History. “May I?”

Alex waved her on.

Vasquez held the book above her head and then dropped it on the sweater. It bounced off. 

They all stared at the book on the floor, then at each other, speechless.

Suddenly the door flew open, and Kara, Lena and Winn ran into the room. “It worked!” Kara yelled. “Alex, it worked! The spurtle actually works!”

And Winn looked around at his friends staring at the floor where the sweater and Hogwarts: A History lay next to each other, the book open to the appendix about the Founders, as if it had just fallen there. “Um, guys… Are you saying, well, I guess, not saying, really… But the plants?” He looked at the plants, no longer attached to the sweater, were reaching out their armlike vines toward him. “They worked?”

And Alex looked dazed, but she said, “They frickin’ worked!”

And Lena waved a tall bottle filled with a sunshine-yellow liquid. “Elixer of Euphoria all around!”

//

Max Lord got to the Quidditch locker room a few minutes late, brushing dirt off his hands, but Leslie Willis didn’t think anything of it at the time. Professor Queen was standing in the middle of the Slytherin team, taking each of their brooms and going over it with his wand, checking for hexes, charms, or other magically induced changes.

Siobhan complained, “Why do our brooms get checked but not the Gryffindors’ brooms?”

Queen handed her back her broom. “Oh, trust me, I’m going to check theirs next.”

He then took each of their wands and did Priori Incantato on them. The most exciting spell anyone had done was Reparo on one boy’s glasses, but everybody knew he always sat on his glasses by accident, so it wasn’t a big deal.

By the time Queen left, they could hear that the stands outside were filled with their cheering fellow students.

Leslie turned to Max. “What’s the strategy Cracker Smax?”

“Win. That’s all. The strategy is just to win at all costs. We have three games to make up for and we only four games until the end of the year. We have to win. Do what you have to. If you have a chance to make a goal, take it. If you have a chance to break one of their players with a Bludger, take it. We. Are. Going. To. Win.”

And he led them out to the field, seeming way too calm for Leslie’s way of thinking, but she had watched Professor Queen prove that they weren’t trying to cheat, so she just shrugged and got ready to play.

//

Alex had checked the rules twice, and had Lucy get some books about sporting law from the library, and together they had ascertained that what they had planned wasn’t cheating. Excellent. This was not only a good opportunity to test their theory, but it was also just playing it safe, given that everybody agreed that there was no way that Max and the Slytherettes weren’t going to play dirty in their first game in months.

Even so, when Professor Queen checked their brooms and their wands for magical cheating, Alex sweated a little bit. It didn’t help that it was also one of the first warm days in a while. But he was satisfied and sent them out to the pitch with a shrug.

//

Phil Coulson sat between the Headmistress and the Defense teacher, ready to do his part if it became necessary. All the teachers were on high alert, wands in hand, ready to protect the students from each other if they had to. As an American, Coulson had previously only seen this level of ferocious competitiveness at a football game, or here in Scotland, soccer, but those games were played on the ground, not a hundred feet in the air.

As expected, the game was brutal. The Slytherin Beaters kept batting the Bludgers at the Gryffindors, and Alex Danvers looked like she got hit at least a dozen times, but she just rolled over her broom and kept playing. The Gryffindor Keeper, James, with his incredibly long arms, was doing his best to keep the Quaffle from scoring. On the other end of the field Siobhan was doing what looked like a lot less work, but still the Quaffle wasn’t going through the goal. It was odd really. Almost as if the Quaffle just lost all velocity the moment it was just about reaching the goal.

The game went on that way for four hours. When they finally took a mandatory time out, he heard Astra murmur, “Did Queen check the goals for hexes?” He shrugged.

In the end, Slytherin only got the Quaffle in five times, and Gryffindor couldn’t make a single goal, but right after the timeout, Kara Danvers took her broom up at least three hundred feet above the stadium (making Coulson a little queasy) and then dove down like a screaming eagle to land with the Snitch struggling in her grasp. So Gryffindor won 150-50, and Maxwell Lord should have looked furious, but instead he looked mildly pleased.

As the teachers made their way to the Great Hall together, Queen told Phil and Astra that he was completely sure that the Slytherins had cheated. “They lost anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter. But as God is my witness, I have no idea how they managed it.”

//

The Gryffindor team carried the Danvers sisters on their shoulders back to the Great Hall for dinner, singing a rousing chorus of “Danvers is Our Queen.” Kara they carried because she’d caught the Golden Snitch and ended the game before the Slytherins could build up points. Alex they carried because she was in no shape to walk.

The sweater, hidden under her Quidditch robes, had worked reasonably well. She knew what it felt like to get hit by a Bludger that had been hit by somebody incredibly strong, and this wasn’t nearly that bad. So she was bruised, yes, pretty much all along her back, sides, arms and legs. But she hadn’t broken a bone. So there was that.

She ate her fill of the pot roast and listened to her teammates rehash the game play by play, but mainly, Alex just felt stiff and happy: stiff because of all the bruises (and the following day would be a lot worse) and happy because yes, they won, but also, the Hufflepuff potion still hadn’t worn off, even though it should have before the game even started.

When dinner was over, she pushed herself to her feet with a little grunt, only to find their Head of House, Professor Coulson standing there with a small bottle labeled Tiger Balm.

“Thank you, sir. I could really use that. Oh, did Kara give you the leftover bits of wandwood?”

“Yes, she did, but I told her to keep the ash, as she might find her friends will actually have a more important use for it than I could.”

And Alex didn’t know what to make of that, but she watched him walk away and leaned on Maggie and Vasquez as they slowly made their way back to the dorm, with her wincing at every step.


	37. It’s a Magical Place

Mona Wu was excited to have lunch with her archivist friend at Cairo’s newest vegetarian restaurant. The woman was American and had helped Mona get used to the Egyptian systems, helping her fill out the paperwork for permission to examine the tomb further. The permission had finally come through and they were celebrating.

Mona got them a table near a window that looked out across the city, bustling even at midday in the heat. She ordered tea, still not entirely used to drinking hot beverages in hot weather, but when in Rome…

Rose got there shortly after her and strode through the room as if she owned it. Mona would never stride anywhere, even as Wolfie, but she was too happy to let the thought bother her.

Rose bussed her on the cheek and sat looking at the menu. “So, Mona, you said you had good news to share.”

“I do, Rose, it’s very exciting. We got the permission to go into the treasure room of Calculus-Attenmak’s tomb, and, er… once the security issues were handled, we found the royal seal unbroken. Look, I took a picture.”

Rose put her own phone down and looked at Mona’s screen, noting the unusual combination of hieroglyphs. “Beautiful. But you said there were security issues?”

“Oh, uh, just, you know, they were worried about spores that might have health issues…”

…

The moment John Constantine entered the tomb, he was glad they’d picked up the extra special ingredients. He’d gone up against skeletal soldiers in the past without dried dragon shit in his pockets and he never wanted to do it again. As they raced toward him and Ray, clattering across the stone floor, he threw down the powder in front of them, clapped his hands together and set it alight, speaking the Latin words as fast as he could.

BANG! The flash of intense light made them both fall back, shielding their eyes. In front of them hundreds of bones hit the floor, no longer animated.

John turned back to the Egyptian official, who looked terrified.

“There you go, squire. Nothing destroyed, just as I promised. Your dead king’s servants are all accounted for. Just less… living dead. You’re welcome.”

…

“Spores,” murmured Rose. “Well, I suppose it’s always wise to err on the side of caution.”

“That’s what I said,” replied Mona sincerely.

//

In London, Luna Lovegood was watching the television screen in her office and growling. Elena Sandoval had always heard that even in the face of Lord V, Luna had never lost her very British and very… something else… cool. But watching Lex Luthor walk free on a legal technicality based on something the prosecutors had done wrong was making Luna Lovegood… growl. And Luna was at least six inches shorter than Elena was and yet, Elena’s father had always warned her about the little ones and the quiet ones, because they were the most dangerous people, and Luna was both little and quiet. And she had been imprisoned by Lord V back in the day and had lived to tell about it.

“Um, Luna? Yes, it sucks, but…”

“You don’t understand. Our prosecutors don’t make that kind of mistake. This stinks. Somebody got to those lawyers.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “One more thing for the list. Has Bobbi gotten anywhere with Lex’s journal?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I feel like we’re missing the connections between all these things.” She stood up and looked at their board, which included sightings of Lex Luthor and/or Otis Graves, across Europe and deep in the heart of London. “Look. They bought bloodroot in Belgrave, fire seed on Elba, and managed to smuggle dragon scales through the port, although we confiscated those, so they’ll have to get more if it’s important to whatever they’re making.”

“I already talked to the Magic Tech people,” said Elena, “and double checked with Misapplied Magic, and everybody concurs with what Darhk said: there are no known spells that require all those things.”

“Sure, but Lex Luthor is an inventor. His whole family is well known for creating new spells and potions.”

The television showed the newly approved Minister of Magical Law Enforcement, and Luna picked up the remote and turned it off. “Great. Just what we needed. Our job is about to get… political.”

//

On Tuesday morning, when Alex and Vasquez were sharing the Daily Prophet over a hurried breakfast, Vasquez noticed two things. One was the names of the two prosecutors who had apparently so botched Lex Luthor's most recent trial. They were oddly familiar, but she couldn't place them. The other thing was a small article about a raid at Magical Law Enforcement that had led to the arrest of five Aurors and three Curse-Breakers, for allegedly taking bribes to look the other way in a case of smuggling artifacts of Dark Magic into England from abroad. 

And the odd thing about that, thought Vasquez, was how little space the newspaper had given to what she was pretty sure should have been a front-page scandal.

//

The Hufflepuffs had a free period right before lunch, and it came as no surprise to Lena that Kara's stomach was already grumbling, so she reached into her bag and pulled out a wrapped-up sandwich and made her eat it before they entered the library. They both knew how seriously Mr. Giles protected the books.

They entered the space, sniffing appreciatively. They had both decided that one of Lena's first inventions when she got out of school would be a perfume called Eau de Bibliotheque.

Kara frowned. "What is Agent Morse doing back?"

Lena looked around and saw nothing unusual, but when Kara hurried through the stacks, Lena followed, curiously.

They stepped out into one of the study areas, with a big oak table covered with books. Sure enough, Agent Morse was flipping through an enormous leather tome. She looked up in surprise to see the students. "Don't you have class?" she asked.

"Study period," explained Lena. "Kara, how did you know she was here?"

"Her shampoo. I've never smelled that in England."

Bobbi Morse closed the book and laughed. "Yeah, I've been hearing about your bloodhound abilities, Kara. Being able to place Lex in the kitchen that night has enabled us to narrow our investigation."

"Then what are you doing back here?" asked Lena. "Shouldn't you be chasing my brother around London or wherever he's gone since the end of the trial?"

"You saw that, did you? Yeah, that's not good news. But we did find a notebook in the kitchen that night, which we believe belonged to him. Unfortunately it's in code."

Lena rubbed her eyes. "May I see it?"

Morse paused, then shrugged and handed Lena the small journal covered in dark green leather. Lena sighed as she brushed her fingers over the elaborate gold foil double L. "Oh, Lex...." She opened it, to show a strange code, with boxes and lines and triangles and double circles. The diary was filled with meticulously written lines that looked like they must have some sort of pattern.

Kara grabbed Lena's shoulder. "Holy sh-shoeshine! That's Kryptonese." She looked up, scared and stumbled through an explanation. "My, my parents. They were friends with Superman, back when we lived in the States."

Lena handed her the journal and she flipped through it. At one point she stopped and gaped at them. "This makes no sense. Why for Rao's sake would Lex write in Kryptonese about Helga Hufflepuff?"

"Read me a line," said Lena urgently.

"'But Helga Hufflepuff demurred, and sayeth, "Not so! For I wight that loyaltie doth pay the greater profite of a soule. Therefore, I vow here to so arm my students specially that they might--"' I don't know that word. This is really old style Kryptonese."

Lena felt the blood drain from her face. "I know that book."

Kara said, "It sounds like Hogwarts: A History, maybe the appendix about the Founders of Hogwarts."

Bobbi stood and was digging through the books on the table. She pulled out the book and flipped back to the appendix and read a bit, but then shook her head. "That's not it. There's no dialogue, just facts."

Lena said, "It's not the History."

"Well, it's certainly not the revised version. I'd have remembered that."

"It's not from a book that's even still in print. It's from Hogwarts: A Pedigree. It was written around the time Victoria took the throne, by a Pureblood shite who was trying to make the case that all four of the Founders believed that only Purebloods should attend Hogwarts, even though scholarship before and since has proven that only Slytherin felt that way."

Agent Morse's head tilted. Slowly, she said, "And you know this... how?"

"I'm a Luthor. Our family library makes the Hogwarts Restricted Section look like a comic book store. We have a copy of that book. Signed, naturally. I'm sure they have a copy of the Pedigree here, probably in the Restricted Section, or it really should be. Mr. Giles will find it for you."

"So I was wrong about the running key cipher..." murmured Morse.

"What?" asked Kara.

But Lena knew about cryptography from Lex, so she just took the journal from Kara and handed it back to Agent Morse. "Never mind. It's lunchtime, and Winn told me Selby said we're having lasagne."

Kara's eyes lit up. Morse gave Lena a small nod of respect, and Lena let herself be dragged down to the Great Hall.


	38. Let's Go Do Some Magic

Oliver Queen limped his way to the Great Hall, grateful once again for Wolfsbane and the potion and all the things that meant he could live his life at least twenty-seven days a month like a normal person, even if, technically, he wasn't anymore.

He got to breakfast to discover waffles with tangerine syrup, and he was happy until the big owl dropped a large letter onto his plate, hooted and flew away. Hagrid's owl was not known for his attention to detail. Oliver wiped the syrup off the note and opened it.

Dear Oliver, Got yer latest on the students. Thanks fer lookin after them fer me. I also received from the Headmistress, asking about the you-know-what and wondering if I'd shared that piece of intellig. with you. And I was thinking mebbe I should. But let me know, and we kin talk when I'm in Edinburgh fer the Games next week. Take care of the parsnips! --Yers fathefully, Hagrid

Oliver stuck the letter in his robes and finished his breakfast quickly. He would need to burn the letter but also write a letter to Hagrid that was coded enough that no one else would understand it but still be intelligible to the big lug, whom he quite liked, even though the half-giant was not exactly the sharpest spoon in the drawer.

//

Winn was sitting just outside the Weasley Memorial Swamp, nursing a bruised arm. Lately the Slytherettes had taken to pretending to be his friend and then punching his arm as if in a friendly sort of macho way. It had gotten old before he's even figured out the pattern. He wished he could make friends easily, the way Kara and Lucy and James could. He understood why Alex and Lena weren't as good at that; they were intimidating. But he himself was too Muggle for the magical world and too magical for the Muggle world.

He also felt bad because he hadn't been too useful with his House's team's object. He'd managed to help the Gryffindors, but not his own House. And sure, charming an object was an iffy proposition for him, the Toymaker's son. But he knew he could be as good at magic as Kara and Lena, and still stay good. The key, he thought, was in his intentions. If he was going to make a thing, he had to make sure that it would be nonviolent, a thing that wouldn't hurt anybody or let anybody get hurt. Maybe, unofficially, he could be his own team. He could secretly charm an object, just to prove he could.

It would take some serious thinking.

//

Ava couldn't find Simmons. She had looked very serious at lunch, but then they had quizzes back to back in History of Magic and Astronomy, so there had really been no time to talk. But they had left the parchment on the mantle over the fire in the Ravenclaw common room for eight days. It should be at optimal dryness now. It was time to pick the spell they were going to write on it.

The argument the team had had about which spell to write had almost turned into a fistfight, so they had gone a different route from politely persuading each other. It was Sara's idea. They would have all their friends recommend a spell and write it on a piece of paper and stick them all in a hat. Whichever one they picked randomly would be the spell they would write on the parchment.

She was pretty sure that their Gryffindor friends had all written down offensive and defensive spells. The Hufflepuffs had gone for spells like Convivium, to make a group of people feel better. But for Ava's money, they needed to find something for an extreme emergency.

Because it was spring, and spring at Hogwarts meant two things: paper tests and ... the other kind.

//

Fitz was visiting the Hufflepuffs, playing a game of Wizard Chess with Maggie, when Winn came in all excited, with a small pile of books and his wand behind his ear.

"What's up, Shortshot?" asked Maggie. "You look excited."

"I have an idea, and maybe it's a little wild, but I think I can do it. But we're going to need the House Elves to help us."

And Maggie and Fitz looked at their chess game. Maggie said, "You're going to beat me in, what? Three moves?"

Fitz shrugged. "Maybe four or five. But yeah."

"Okay, we're good. C'mon, boys. Let's go do some magic."

//

Lex's lab was as secretive as a place could be in the 21st century. He'd used all kinds of charms and hexes to get around surveillance technology and technomancy, and the entrances and exits were all underground and mazelike, so even if someone ever accidentally found their way in, the odds were they would wander and starve before they'd ever get out.

His mother, of course, had a map on her phone. He knew better than to ask how she'd managed that. Instead, he focused on the experiment. Once Lillian brought him the last of the details, he would be ready to test it out.

"Hey, Mr. Luthor! I brought you those guys Mr. Ward recommended!"

Lex closed his eyes. Otis was useful in his own way, even if that way was oafish and annoying. Lex schooled his face and turned, looking pleased.

"Mr. Crabbe! Mr. Goyle! What a pleasant surprise! I was sure you would be too busy to be bothered with a tour of my lab!"

Crabbe rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, well. An old friend recommended that we might be, um, silent partners in your work."

"Indeed you might," said Lex, smiling.

//

Selby missed Quaff, who was still at St. Mungo's in London, although he wrote every day about how much better he felt and how bored he was with no work to do. Selby didn't envy him. House Elves were meant to work.

So it was a nice surprise when the children came down to the kitchen to ask for help with a project they were working on. Selby had been washing dishes at the immense sink, and bubbles were still rising and falling throughout the kitchen (always a side effect of magical suds) when the Hufflepuffs and one half of FitzSimmons came in.

"Where is Kara?" asked Selby. "Selby made cheesy biscuits, but of course they're not really biscuits, they're scones, but Selby used her mother's recipe, and the Americans..."

Maggie and Winn nodded their understanding. Fitz looked confused.

Selby asked, "How can Selby help the Hufflepuffs?"

Winn asked eagerly, "Do you have melons yet? I know it's early in the season..."

Selby tottered over to a door leading into an immense closet-like space. "In the pantry, yes, which kind? Honeydew? Cantaloupe? Antelope? Double Entendre? House Elves gather all kinds of food for the feast at the end of the school year."

Winn frowned. "Friendship should be sweet. Let's go with Honeydew." He really wasn't sure about the goat or French type. It was better to be safe.

Selby brought out four honeydew melons, setting them down on one of the central worktables and rapping on them with his knuckled. "Very fresh. Very ripe. What else can Selby do for the HuffleClaws?"

Fitz waved his hands. "Hey, I'm just a witness."

Winn and Maggie each took two melons and pulled out their wands. Maggie said, "I still think your Latin is wrong, Sureshot."

"My Latin is just fine, thank you." He borrowed a mortar and pestle from Selby, measured ingredients and ground them finely together. He took half and Maggie took half. "Ready?" he asked.

"As ever," said Maggie.

Simultaneously, they sprinkled the ground herbs (and non-herbs) over the pair of melons.

"Fabricare amicus!" shouted Winn, with a flourish of his wand.

"Amicos facit!" said Maggie, also with a flick of her wand.

There was a moment of silence. Then the two melons in front of Winn... rearranged themselves so that the smaller melon was on top. Vinelike arms and legs grew out of the larger melon. A small slash appeared at the bottom of the top melon, followed by two large button-like... eyes?... above it.

It was a face. And the face had a high-pitched squeaky voice.

"Winnnnnn. Frunnnnnnd."

"Maggie, I did it! We did it!"

But Maggie looked at her melons, which simply sat there on the table being melons. "Yeah, Schott. You did it. I... really didn't."

And Selby said, "Don't worry, Little Hufflepuff. Selby can still make melon soup with these. You can bring it up to Kara, who is probably hungry. And here, take two spoons with you. And two napkins. And if you need more, let Selby know."

"Er, uh, yeah, thanks, Selby. Right."

And the melon-head said. "Hnnnngry."

Winn asked, "Um, Selby? What do melons... melon people... eat?

//

Vasquez was pacing around their room in the dormitory. Lucy was out, allegedly studying with James. Alex was out doing extra Quidditch practice with Maggie, who had offered to teach her defensive flying. Vasquez tried not to think about it. Sara had said she was going to see how the Ravenclaws were getting on with their object, since they were one of the only teams to not yet have reported their object finished.

Something had been niggling in the back of Vasquez's mind for the last few days, and she couldn't figure it out, but she also couldn't concentrate on studying, and she thought maybe if she could figure it out, it would go away and she could study and get the kinds of OWLS she would need to become an Auror.

She pulled the crumpled up scrap of paper out of the pocket of her robes. On it were two German-sounding names, the names of Lex Luthor's lawyers. Why did they sound so bloody familiar? She was sure she had seen them before...

She stopped pacing and sat on her bed with the scrap in her left hand and her wand in her right. There was an idea for a spell she'd been playing around with in her head now for weeks. There was no one around to embarrass her if it didn't work. What the hell.

"Accio needful!"

Something slid out from under her bed, slamming into her heels and sending her tumbling to the floor. It was her Ministry scrapbook, the one that held the clippings from the Daily Prophet on all the cases she worked over the previous summer, and clippings she had cut out of the paper since then on issues that she thought might be relevant to the Ministry if she ended up being offered a second summer there...

She paged through the scrapbook slowly, at first not knowing why she might need to. Then she flipped open a page from mid-autumn, and there they were, the German names.

They were the names of the three students from Durmstrang whose brooms had been hexed to drag them off to the Black Forest and leave them there.

Their fathers and one mother were the lawyers who had failed so badly that Lex Luthor had gotten away with his civil crimes. Of course. Blackmail. Very Luthor-ish, Lena notwithstanding. But who could Vasquez tell?

Gritting her teeth, she hurried out of the castle and down to the Quidditch pitch. She might have a personal issue with Maggie Sawyer, but all the students who had met Elena Sandoval grudgingly admitted that there was an adult who actually listened to kids. Maggie would know how to get a hold of her quickly.

//

Kara was irritable, and since Mr. Giles had kicked her out of the library for leaving cookie crumbs in a ninety-eight year old book, she was also at loose ends. She thought about visiting the kitchen, but she wasn't hungry precisely, just bored. She wandered through the castle and gradually found herself outside the Room of Requirement, where Sara was pacing back and forth. The door opened just as Sara saw her.

"Kara, c'mon in. The Ravenclaws are trying to finish up their object."

Reluctantly, Kara followed her in to where Ava, FitzSimmons and Leslie were arguing with Jess and Max about their next steps.

Ava said, "We've aged the parchment the optimal amount. But the ink still doesn't really do the trick. It's bad enough that it runs too much--"

And Max said, "The runniness is a direct result of the magic being too thin--"

Leslie insisted, "A tiny jolt of electricity will--"

But Fitz said, "It's not like a potion or a science experiment! We're trying to turn a wand spell into a merely spoken spell, no wand required! And we don't even know if that is possible!"

"Because," continued Simmons, "the inherent magic in wandwood carries at least half of those spells, maybe more so without that--"

"Um, guys?" said Sara.

They turned to her, and looked at Kara next to her, holding up her hand as if she were in class.

"Kara?" said Simmons.

"Um, yeah. So maybe wandwood ash would solve both those problems..."

And they stared at her, but Ava and Gemma were grinning.


	39. Charm Sometimes Requires Just a Bit More Work

The new Minister of Magical Law Enforcement greeted his guest cordially and offered him coffee. They sat in Ward's new office low in the Ministry of Magic.

"So, Mr. Luthor," said Ward. "I drew up a list of my subordinates. I think you'll agree that shifting Lovegood would prove too difficult, with her friends in high places. But reversing the policy on working with the Americans should be an easy sell."

"Excellent. And demonizing the Education Minister?"

"Much harder, again, because of the Potter generation. They have long memories."

"Even when we have actual demons to deploy?"

"Strictly speaking, they're aliens."

Luthor waved his hand. "Semantics." His cell phone pinged and he looked at the text with a flash of excitement, and then the blank look came back. "Work on it, Mr. Ward. I didn't spend thousands of pounds to get a Minister who believed that the word 'can't' should be part of his vocabulary."

Grant Ward nodded. "I'm still working on replacing the dragon scales."

"Good." He glanced at his phone with the whisper of a smile.

"Good news, sir?" asked Ward.

"Very. Because unlike you, my mother gets things done. You've met her, I believe."

Ward paled. "Just the once. A formidable woman."

"What can I say?" said Lex Luthor. "It runs in the family."

//

The name on the passport the tall woman gave the railway porter said she was Rose Calvin, and it wasn't far wrong. The leather purse said Gucci, and that was entirely accurate, with the exception of the inner pocket that had been charmed to hold a workable travel lab including a vault containing enough magical contraband to get her thrown into Azkaban for decades. The key was always traveling by Muggle transport, since the Floo networks always had detectors of things like the Concelio charm. As long as she looked and acted like a Muggle, she could slip undetected from country to country all the way from Egypt to England.

It was ironic, she conceded to herself as she watched the Italian countryside slip away behind her train. Here she was, the matriarch of one of the oldest and purest of the pureblood families, moving toward the long-term goal of taking over the Ministry and making England magical again, and she was going to undermine the Muggles by pretending to be one so well no one who saw her could possibly imagine her so much as knowing about the existence of pumpkin juice.

She would outmuggle the Muggles. What was that annoying phrase Lex had taught Lena? Go big or go home.

//

On Tuesday morning, Alex saw the owl coming and moved Vasquez's pumpkin juice before the newspaper could land in it. Vasquez gave her a look of surprise, but Alex, blushing, just grabbed the sports section, muttering, "I need to see how the women's Quidditch finals are going in the States..."

Thoughtfully, Vasquez took the front section and read about the increased political upheaval in magical London. Prime Minister Plump announced that he was merging the Magical Military with the Magical Law Enforcement and placing both under MLE Minister Grant Ward. The Daily Prophet criticized the decision in no uncertain terms, and encouraged the Wizarding world to protest and vote and do all they could to prevent the New Fascism from creating a new version of the Bad Old Days under Lord Voldemort.

When Alex and Vasquez traded sections of the newspaper, Lucy said they looked like some old married couple, and Alex blushed again, but Vasquez simply said, "Let's just hope the coming civil war doesn't happen until after the Quidditch World Cup this summer. England, Sweden, Chile and America are all looking like good prospects, and I'm really hoping my dad gets tickets."

And it made no sense as a reply, but Alex looked grateful and Lucy backed off.

//

While Lex's personal assistant (not Otis) gave Messrs. Crabbe and Goyle the tour of the underground lab, Lillian walked into his private office just off his personal lab and handed him a small parcel. The return address was the Borgin and Burke Kyoto office. Lex smiled grimly. He had been disappointed before.

"It won't be what you're looking for," drawled Lillian. "There's no way Helga would have let Salazar's people get hold of her spoon."

"Doesn't matter. She's not the only one who ever tried that particular trick. In fact, I've recently heard that my dear sister is in the process of doing it too. With his cousin, as a matter of fact." He didn't smirk at Lillian's small growl, but kept his face calm as his fingers betrayed him by fumbling to unwrap the package.

The box opened and he scooped out styrofoam peanuts, a scroll, and a Japanese-style spoon with a deep flat bottom. He read the note from Mr. Malfoy aloud to his mother.

"Dear Mr. Thorul, Enclosed please find the Chiri-Renge ("fallen lotus petal") spoon from the collection of Shimazu Nariakira, which fell into the possession of Tantalus Rawson during his travels in Satsuma. It has been described as 'wandlike in its stirring' abilities. Our preliminary tests suggest it may be able to upgrade a potion by as much as 11%. I hope this finds you well. I remain your servant, Draco Malfoy." 

Lex handed his mother the spoon. "What do you think?"

She waved her wand over it without a word and it began to glow a pale green. "It's not Helga's, certainly. But it just might be enough. And I trust you've already found some... volunteers to help us finish this experiment, and upon whom we can test the efficacy and robustness of our results..."

Lex smiled. "They should be coming back from their tour any moment now."

//

Once Kara had delivered the wandwood ash to the Ravenclaw common room and they had added it to their ink, and Leslie had given it the smallest zap of electricity to make the potion cohere, then they unrolled the parchment and found the best of their pens and laid them on Gemma's desk.

Among themselves, the Ravenclaws had argued about what spell to write on the prepared parchment. The slip of paper they pulled from the hat said Protego Totallum, but Ava argued that this was a spell they could easily do with just wands, so it should be a more advanced incantation.

She pulled down an old dusty leather tome about the size of her chest and cracked it open to show them a different, much older spell. They muttered their way through the unfamiliar Latin.

"Huh," said Fitz. "You may just be right after all."

Gemma's eyes went wide. "Oh my, yes," she said, then set about writing it out, in her very best copperplate handwriting.

//

Professors May and Johnson took the advantage of the holiday weekend to travel to Eliza's lab in Switzerland. When they exited from the fireplace in her office, they heard sirens sounding and red lights flashing. The door opened suddenly and a middle-aged woman with long ash-blonde hair strode in, stared at them and then looked at her watch. "Wait," she said, "that's today?"

"Um," said Daisy. "Yes?"

May said, "Professor Danvers, what's wrong? Is this a bad time?"

"My husband Jeremiah was supposed to return from Budapest this morning, and I just got word from an old friend in England that he's been seen with Lex Luthor in London."

"Kidnapped?" asked Daisy.

"She said he seemed like he was acting freely."

"But that doesn't rule out the Imperius Curse," said May.

"That's what I'm afraid of," said Eliza as she dropped into her office chair and stuck her wand into her pencil mug, a bright blue thing with the words "world's greatest MOM" on it.  
She rubbed her eyes tiredly and said, "So you said you managed it. Show me?"

And they showed her the shrinking potion, and the jar full of miniscule cockroaches and explained Daisy's abilities. 

Eliza said, "So you're a meta-human? So the rumors are true?

"Basically," said Daisy. 

May said, "I've been reading up on Theoretical Potions, ways people have tried to make verbal spells into longer lasting incantations by forcing the person to ingest them. That's what I suspect Lex has been doing. The problem I see is that from what I've been told about the ingredients he's using, he may be trying to replace the combination of Hungarian Scanvine, which has been seriously damaged by climate change, and ground unicorn horn, which is simply illegal and rare, with dragon scales."

"You can't ingest--" started Eliza.

"Not if you want to survive," said Daisy.

May snorted. "Lex Luthor has never been known for his interest in keeping his foes or allies healthy in the pursuit of his goals."

Eliza nodded and handed the two Americans the latest Daily Prophet. "Do we think this is one of his goals? Taking over the UK?"

"Shii-it," said Daisy.

May asked carefully, "Why might they need Jeremiah?"

"Why do you need Daisy?" Eliza asked tiredly.

"All right," said May. "We need to put our heads together and come up with a plan."


	40. Sometimes You Need a Scalpel

As the days gradually grew warmer, and flowers and trees bloomed, leaving the air redolent with a wild mix of scents, the students doubled down on their studying for the upcoming exams.

The House Elves conspired with Kara and Winn to make sure Maggie and Alex and the rest of the fifth years had access to oatmeal cookies (with walnuts and chocolate chips) to keep their energy up. Fitz, in his spare time, made a scroll case for the Ravenclaw spell that Simmons had written out, and in the Teachers' Lounge, all of the objects were on display on tables around the room. The teachers had already weeded out the objects that had failed to work, backfired, or melted the tables they had been set on, or (in the case of the Slytherins' Hiccupping Hockey Puck) bandaged the students who had tried to test it with field hockey sticks...

What was left was still a pretty good range of objects.

The Slytherins' SpellStopper, ReptileTranslator, and Avocado Grenades (nobody really knew what those were supposed to do, but the attached note recommended not dropping them on your foot...)

The Ravenclaws' SpellScroll, Headband of Memory, Ring-of-Riddle-Replies (based on Muggle technology that predicted passwords), and LumbarLibrary (an expanded backpack that automatically returned a book to its correct place on the shelves)...

The Hufflepuffs' Convivium Cake, MelonMan, and Spell Spurtle...

The Gryffindors' Automatic Returning Arrows (sixth years had stolen the idea), Vest of Valor, and Quidditch Bludger-Proof Sweater (they were still working on a better name).

Once the exams were over, the contest would be judged by the Minister of Magic and prizes would be awarded. Minerva and Flitwick were quite proud of the students, even if Minerva, in the privacy of her study, admitted to Dumbledore's portrait that she had a sinking feeling that wild and perilous chaos was probably going to ensue before they got the term-end feasting.

Albus sighed, "Well, at least you are prepared for the inevitable, my friend."

And Minerva really hoped she was.

//

The Great Hall was cleared of the usual House tables, which were replaced with chairs for all the fifth year students to sit and take their OWLS.

Alex, James, Vasquez, Lucy, Maggie, Ava, FitzSimmons, Max, Siobhan and Leslie gathered just outside the great double doors.

Lucy murmured to Maggie, "Five copper."

Maggie said, "She's not nearly so predictable."

Simmons turned to Fitz and said, "Five, four, three--"

And Alex looked from Vasquez to James, squared her shoulders and said, "We few, we happy few, we band of sisters; for she today who sheds her ink with me shall be my sister, be she never so vile...."

James just laughed and Vasquez rolled her eyes. But Maggie and Fitz, with deep sighs, paid up.

//

Bobbi Morse had heard the news on one of the TVs in King's Cross Station, and was hurrying back to the Ministry when she got the text from Lavender Brown.

\--don't return home base, house instead.

Bobbi stared at her phone, typed, "But the report said all hands--"

\--repeat house instead, remind interns to pick up snacks

And that was code. Bobbi was used to turning on a dime, sending out the alert to all staff to find safe houses, but that didn't mean that her blood didn't run cold as she hit SEND.

//

Far north in the Great Hall in Hogwarts, Vasquez read the article in the Metropolis Magical Times about rumors that had even reached the States that the editor of the Daily Prophet had disappeared (rather than what the Prophet itself reported about his being taken ill and going on a medical leave of absence) and been replaced by a young journalist known to be a pro-Purity Party hack. She swallowed hard and handed the paper to Alex, who read it with worried eyes.

The world was coming apart at the seams. And they wouldn't even be getting their OWL exam results for three more days.

//

That evening in the Hufflepuff dorm lounge, the boys were playing a raucous game of Exploding Snap, but Kara was standing at the window watching the stars come out. Maggie walked up behind her.

"Hey, Little Danvers. You okay?"

Kara shook her head and adjusted her glasses. "Alex thinks it's bad, what's happening in London. Like, Lord V-level bad."

"She's not wrong. I've had my aunt on my sorry ass via owl these last few days. Urging me to be careful, even though I'm hardly a target..."

"You never know," said Kara darkly.

"Hey, before, Lex was looking for something, and Nora turned on him, so she is unlikely to side with him now. Whatever he's up to, I don't think we're in any danger here. I'm more worried for her, in the thick of it down in London."

Kara turned and gave her a quick hug. Then she muttered, "Alex had an owl from our mom. She thinks our dad's been kidnapped by Lex. They were seen together in London, but my dad is supposed to be in Turkey or somewhere, so I thought maybe Polyjuice Potion? Alex just automatically assumes that Mom isn't being paranoid."

"My aunt always says, just because you're paranoid..."

"Doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, yeah, I've heard that. I just..."

Maggie threw her arm over Kara's shoulder. "You want to protect the ones you love. We all do, it's just--"

Kara's stomach gave out a loud growl and she blushed.

Maggie said, "Let's go down to the kitchen, get you a snack."

With a sigh, Kara followed her down to the kitchens. Outside the door with the wedding cake, they could hear muffled cheers and glanced at each other before knocking and entering.

What met their eyes appeared to be an impromptu welcome home party for Quaff, whose head was still bandaged, but whose grin looked big enough to knock him over. At the big sink, dishes from the school dinner were soaking in the suds.

When the House Elves gathered around Quaff turned and saw the girls enter, they immediately hurried over. "What can Selby and his staff be doing to help Kara and her friend?" asked Selby.

Kara said, "Oh gosh, no, we didn't mean to interrupt your party! We'll just go back to our dorm! We're sorry!"

The House Elves fell silent, staring with huge eyes as the girls backed their way toward the door, but Selby just stepped forward and took their hands. "A celebration is for as many friends as possible! Tuna sandwiches and tiramisu all around!"

Maggie stared as the table by the door was suddenly filled with her favorite lunch and treat. Kara looked like she was about to cry, but then she looked at the sink, grinned and strode over to it. Whipping the spurtle out of the pocket of her robes, she dipped it into the sink and then waved it in the air, back and forth, yelling, "Fabulosa eam!"

The air of the kitchen was suddenly filled with enormous soap bubbles in every color of the rainbow.

//

Bobbi answered the door and let in Eliza Danvers, Daisy Johnson and Melinda May. Rory and Lance were already in the living room, trying on navy coveralls and Lavender Brown was laying spells on mops and buckets

Daisy nodded appreciatively. "I like it," she said.

Lance offered May one of the mops. She shrugged. "If I need a mop, I'll take one."

Bobbi, having anticipated this, said, "The biggest bad of our time since Lord V is about to attempt to take over the Ministry of Magic. We think he has used a potion to inflict an Imperius Curse on our strongest allies. Harry Potter and Hermione Granger are both on diplomatic missions out of the country, and Grant Ward, a longtime Hydra mole, is now the Minister of both Magical Law Enforcement and the Armed Forces."

She paused, licked her lips and looked down at her old colleague. "Take a mop, May. Trust me. You're going to need it."


	41. But Even Surgeons Need a Plan

Luna Lovegood straightened her Ravenclaw tie. Just because she had known Padma Patil for twenty-seven years didn’t mean she shouldn't show proper respect to the office she held. The forms in her hand were meticulously filled out; Luna was nothing if not precise. And of course, because anyone who knew Luna would want a little more than her word on anything that might—what was the phrase that had followed her from Hogwarts? “reeked of wrackspurts”?—well, of course Luna had documentation, photographs, and an affidavit from Elena Sandoval, whose reputation was pristine.

Padma hurried in, listened to Luna’s argument, glanced at her paperwork and sighed. “I’ll look at this right after my next meeting, and messenger it over to you. Sorry, Luna, but with all of the allegations flying around about your department, I can’t do anything automatically.”

Luna grit her teeth but said, “Of course, your honor.”

Padma rolled her eyes at the formality. “You know, for normal people, saying, ‘Oh, this reminds me of our high school days’ would be a statement of nostalgia.”

Luna nodded. “I can’t say I’m not a bit nostalgic, though. At least back then, we had Harry.”

“Come the time, come the man,” said Padma, picking up her wig and heading out the door.

Luna followed her, wondering if this time they might actually be waiting for a woman instead.

//

Elena sat in Luna’s office, feeding her niece’s owl a piece of the sandwich she had picked up from the ministry’s café. She left the tea where it was, drank from her Chudly Canons water bottle absently.

The note that Vasquez and Maggie had sent her made the connection between the Durmstrang incident and Lex Luthor’s lawyers. She flicked her wand and the red yarn on the board moved to mark the connection. And stepping back, Elena, looking at the pattern of string, rather than the pictures and maps and notes the yarn connected, it almost looked like a hieroglyph or a rune or—

The door slammed open and Luna charged in muttering about red tape. She threw herself into her chair, poured herself a cup of tea and drank it down. She was reaching for the pot again when she glanced up at the board and the pattern that Elena’s recent change had made.

“Good God, Elena! That’s Odegra!” She shot a light from her wand and the string burned from beginning to end, singeing the cut-out articles from the Daily Prophet.

As Elena explained the Durmstrang connection, Luna nodded tiredly. “It all fits. Rory was right. Go to Durmstrang and pick them up for their safety. Deliver them to Hogwarts—it’s the safest place we’ve got, and then stay there for the moment. Then you are officially off the case because of the new anti-cooperation decree from Minister Ward. So you’ll be there acting in your capacity as your niece’s guardian.”

Elena rose and strode to the fireplace, grabbing a handful of Floo powder. “So the midden is about to hit the windmill?” she asked.

Luna yawned hugely. “Any minute now. And I’m not as young and spry as I used to be.”

And as Elena spun through the Floo network toward Germany, she thought, “Very few of us are.”

//

When Minerva got the owl from Elena, back again in Hogsmeade and bringing three English Durmstrang students with her for their protection, she called an emergency meeting in the faculty lounge. Elena Sandoval briefed them on the sudden and disconcerting changes at the Ministry of Magic. Professor Coulson offered context for the proto-fascist magical takeovers around the world in the course of the last century. 

Professor Flitwick protested, “But Minister Plump is a known centrist, always playing both sides. There’s no way he could consolidate enough power to—”

The door opened and Professor Darhk walked in. Minerva thought she looked thin and pale, but no one could mistake the strength and seriousness in her voice. “It is not Plump who we must fear. Lex Luthor is behind all this. He’s always been aiming at taking over the Ministry.”

“But he’s American,” pointed out Professor Queen.

“Dual citizenship,” said Darhk. “And from one of the purest magical families on either side of the pond. And now, maybe with enhanced magical ability to consolidate the support of not just those who agree with his ideas, but also those who abhor them.”

“But how?” asked Professor In-Ze.

Elena Sandoval said, “Luna Lovegood thinks he’s found Helga Hufflepuff’s lost spoon.”

Minerva, Flitwick and Queen shared confused glances.

Coulson burst out, “Boo-ya!” Then blushed. “I mean, obviously, not in a good way. Of course not. Bad. Very bad. But if its existence has finally been proven? That’s—Er, terrible. Just terrible.”

Professor M’orrz just rolled her eyes.

Darhk said, “The theory is he’s been trying to turn spoken spells into potions.”

“Spells…” said M’orrz. “Like… the unforgivable curses?”

“But that’s impossible,” said Professor Queen.

There was a short shocked silence, broken only by Minerva’s deep sigh.

“Not necessarily… Oh, come now. The theory has been out there for decades. Lex’s grandmother posited a part of what would be necessary, super-charging potion ingredients. And the Doctors Danvers have been working at CERN to test ways Muggle science might enable that. And our opposite numbers at Ilvermorny have proven that a metahuman with magic could do it.”

“Quake,” said Coulson.

“And after that,” said Flitwick, “it would just be applied charms, especially if they have the right kind of tool.”

“Or…” said Elena slowly, “the right ancient artifact…”

“Well,” muttered Queen. “Now we’re in the shit for sure.”

//

Down in the Great Hall, the Gryffindors were marveling that the teachers had not shown up for lunch.

“Not even Queen,” said Lucy. “And that man has an appetite.”

Alex was reading a note from her parents’ owl. With a hollow voice, she said, “It’s happening.”

“What is?” asked James.

“Our generation’s chance. We’re going to have to step up.”

Vasquez took the letter from her, read it quickly, and stared off into space. Over her shoulder, James read, “’Girls: London is dangerous. There’s a civil war going on at the Ministry.’ Holy shit! And your parents want you to stay here over the summer, for your safety.”

A dozen owls flew in. Vasquez said, “Look who they’re going to. Maggie. Winn. Lena…”

“All Hufflepuffs,” said James.

But Alex said, “Only coincidentally. Maggie’s aunt is an Auror. Winn and Lena have family in Azkaban. People connected or in danger.”

And that was when the teachers filed in and took their places on the dais, standing behind their chairs, flanking Professor McGonnigle. The Great Hall was filled with the muttering of hundreds of students. Then a bell rang and the Headmistress pointed her wand at her throat. Silence reigned.

When she spoke, she could be heard by all. “Due to an emergency, I must ask all the Houses to return to your House dormitories, accompanied by your House Head. You are to stay there until further notice. If the crisis continues through dinner, the House Elves will provide your dinners there. Meanwhile, will those students who just received Owls please report to Elena Sandoval in the Room of Requirement. Oh, and I should emphasize: any student caught wandering the halls without permission shall face the possibility of expulsion from Hogwarts.”

Alex stared as the hall erupted in hurrying students. Their Hufflepuff friends joined the knot around Alex. “I got an owl,” she said worriedly, “but not from the teachers—"

Maggie said, “Let’s go. If we’re wrong, Aunt Elena will tell us. They don’t expel you for being confused.”


	42. Things Finally Coming to a Head

Luna woke with a start in her office. It had just been maybe twenty minutes, and it wasn’t much of a surprise, given how she’d been working all-out for weeks, but still. It was one thing to tell yourself you weren’t a kid anymore. It was another to prove it.

A rapid knock on her door made her jump up to answer it, blocking the messenger’s sight of the inside of her office. “Yes?”

The scared-looking young man said, “Um, Auror Lovegood, ma’am? You’re wanted in Minister Ward’s office. Um, immediately?”

With a sigh, she locked and magically sealed her office, then took off down to the lower levels at a brisk pace. She wouldn’t have been the Auror she was if she hadn’t seen this coming.

//

Lillian Luthor stood tall at the back of the Magical Ministry’s Press Room, her arms crossed over her chest and a satisfied smile on her face. The reporters crowding toward the front to report on the imminent announcement were all known to her—those from the Daily Prophet (and she’d vetted several of them herself), the Sorcerous Times, the American, French and German papers, all of them looking eager.

None of them were nearly as eager as she was.

Because yes, she herself had spent decades at work on this, but her own ancestors and those of her currently-imprisoned husband, Lionel, had been working toward this for generations. And even Lord V hadn’t managed it. But she and her family had.

She picked up her tablet as the Ministers in their deep black robes (and Plump in his pink robes) gathered at the front as cameras went off. As they talked, Lillian checked off the items on her To-Do List: Day One.

•Minister of Magic Plump was accused of corruption and receiving emoluments from Muggles in Britain and abroad, forced to resign, and escorted to Azkaban. Check.

•Minister of Magical Law Enforcement and Armed Forces, Grant Ward, accepted the position of Acting Minister of Magic and immediately declared martial law (check), at which announcement,

•the recently acquitted Lex Luthor argued vehemently against such “unnecessary and extremist measures,” thus setting himself as the (known Purist but) apparently Centrist option to replace Plump. Check.

•The shouting match was a piece of pure political theater, caught on the cameras and scrolls of all journalists present. Check.

•An extraordinary election was called, to be conducted magically and instantly, the tally being shown above their heads. Ward received 41% of the vote, Lex received 45%, with the remaining 14% going to Hermione Granger. Grant made a show of demanding an independent recount, just as he had assured them he would. Check.

The Press hurried off to report to their publications.

Lillian turned to the woman next to her, a younger blonde with a disheveled Ravenclaw tie, a slightly dazed look, and odd radish earrings. “Good work, Luna. Now you simply have to enforce what comes next.”

And the woman followed Lillian out obediently.

Lillian had known she would, of course. Luna was British, after all. No true Brit ever turned down a cup of tea when exhausted, Auror training be damned.


	43. To Properly Roil, Currents Must Be Going Both Ways

Meanwhile, at the Magical Court six stories under Old Bailey, Padma Patil tiredly entered her rooms and slid the white wig off her head. It was long past time for her to look more closely at Luna’s paperwork, outlining as it did the charges of trafficking the body parts of endangered magical species across multiple international borders and colluding to destroy the Last Endangered Individuals in six different countries.

Padma grunted at Luna’s thoroughness. Either one of those charges would bring Lex Luthor and fifteen of his associates up before the Hague (Magical Division).

Quickly, Padma signed the requested warrant and sent it off by messenger. She rubbed her eyes. Their generation had hoped they’d only have to save the world just the once, but so many of them had gone into law enforcement because if magic had taught them nothing else, it taught that life moved in cycles.

At least this time, they had the proper training.

//

Gary Greene looked out the window of the towering Art Deco building that housed the Manhattan branch of Magical Law Enforcement. Gary liked the old building, liked how it reminded him of time and history and his earlier work at the Time Bureau. He had given the Lex Luthor problem a lot of thought and his research had come up with evidence that supported his hunch.

He picked up his phone and dialed the number he had found.

“Internal Revenue Service. Auditor Dox speaking.”

“Hello, Mr. Dox. I’m Greene. Gary Greene. Manhattan Magical Law Enforcement. I have a dossier on an international criminal who has broken a whole raft of tax laws. We should talk.”

//

Lex Luthor was no stranger to staying up until the wee hours, but usually that meant doing something fascinating, a scientific experiment, perhaps, in excellent company, i.e., alone.

The night after his bloodless coup d'état, he was still doing paperwork until 3:30 a.m., surrounded by brainless, nattering, pencil-pushing bureaucrats who insisted on everything being done in triplicate, with no magical shortcuts: another thing he would have to change once he was well and duly, officially, recognized from street to palace as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom's magical citizens.

But all that did mean that after grabbing three hours' shut-eye and stumbling wearily back up to the lobby of the Ministry of Magic, when he saw the blue-coveralled janitors converging with buckets and mops toward the front doors--where some numbskull had apparently dropped a large glass flask of some hot bubbling purple potion and then apparently tried to mop it up with the Daily Prophet--he wasn't prepared for one of the janitors to split her mop handle in two and attack him with her batons like a ninja.

A magical attack wouldn't have worked, but physical--he felt the crack against his skull before he could shout, "Expelliarmus!" 

But then the other two ninjanitors back-flipped at him from two directions, and the only option for dodging them sent him stumbling into the purple goo, which sizzled through the soles of his good Italian leather shoes.

His bodyguard raced over, but a smaller janitor, an Asian woman, somersaulted over to him, kicking him in the face, and dislocating his arm as he fell away from her.

Ministry security came running to Lex's screams, and one hardy agent pulled him out of the goo, leaving most of both his shoes melting into the sizzling mess.

Lex, in his green stocking feet, knew he was not the wizardly menace he usually managed to be, but his Cruciatus curse didn't care. Within moments, the women with their mops were rolling on the floor screaming.

Lex had not expected, after the previous day's work, to require his plan B (for Bellicose) but the moment he touched the tattooed double L on his arm, he could feel the response of his soldiers, zooming toward the ministry from all around London, and he could hear the soldiers from Ward's ministry zapping in via the enormous fireplaces.

He found himself surrounded by men and women in the navy coveralls, zapping him with spells. His feet were on fire briefly, but a well-meaning ministry agent put it out with Aguamenti, leaving the lobby floor awash in water and the purple goo reacting with green sparks and fog.

Visibility was awful, but Lex had never worried much about collateral damage, so it didn't bother him to randomly strike out with spells and curses.

They could sort out friend from foe later.

//

The ClawHuffleDors, Max, and Leslie hurried along to the Room of requirement to find Elena there with another dozen students. She was wearing plain grey robes, not the trenchcoat typical of Aurors. Behind her was a table, on which a shiny white cloth covered a collection of larger and smaller bumps. The students exchanged looks.

Elena clapped her hands. “All right, people. Listen up! Although you know me in my professional capacity as an Auror, I am currently off duty and am here in my capacity as Maggie Sawyer’s guardian and thereby as a Hogwarts chaperone. Laugh now and get it out of the way.”

The students who did not know her did indeed laugh. Maggie’s friends looked deadly serious. They’d heard the stories from Maggie and Vasquez. If Bobbi Morse had impressed the school with her “relatable” demeanor and martial prowess, this woman, ten years her senior, had gone up against some of the big names of magical crime in England, wand to wand. If Professor McGonnigle had put her in charge of their safety, that told them just how much danger they might be in. Gradually, the other students fell silent, worried by the serious silence of the rest.

Lena Luthor said, “Ms. Sandoval. It’s my brother, isn’t it.”

“Yes, it is. He just staged a coup d’état at the Ministry of Magic.”

Again, the other group gasped and pulled physically away from Lena, who just sighed and threw them a haughty look. But Kara, Alex, Maggie and the rest surrounded Lena. Maggie though she heard Vasquez… growl.

Maggie decided to set the tone. “Yes, ma’am. What do you need from us?”

Before Elena could reply, Max snorted. “Oh, pullease! When has an adult actually needed anything from an underage witch or wizard?”

Alex threw herself at him, but Kara and James caught her and pulled her back. Maggie laid a warning hand on Alex’s shoulder.

Elena sighed loudly, set her wand on the table and cracked her knuckles. Max paled. But when she spoke, she said, “When did that last happen? Don’t they teach you anything in History of Magic? The last time that happened was a bit more than twenty years ago, when magical and Muggle world alike were saved by a group of underage wizards and witches.”

She paused, then added, “With the help of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley, who were of age.”

She let the implications of her words sink in. She looked from one student to the next, until she had met each one’s eyes. Then she pointed at the table. “I came to the Room of Requirement before meeting with your teachers and I asked it to provide us with what we would need to win back the Ministry, and I asked the Room to cover it in white samite, the fabric that, of old, the Holy Grail was wrapped in when it was presented to Arthur’s knight, Sir Galahad.”

Their eyes shifted to the shiny white fabric and the lumps beneath it.

Elena said, “Ms. Luthor, would you remove the cloth?”

Lena stepped forward, head high, reached out and whipped the cloth off, to reveal—

A red and gold sweater with leaves growing out of it,

A gold leather scroll case, embossed with the Ravenclaw seal,

A spoon with a hole in it,

And a wooden doorstop.

There was a silence and then the room erupted.

“Where’s Gryffindor’s sword?” asked Alex.

“We’re going to need a real spellbook,” shouted Simmons.

“This is some weird-ass bullshit,” yelled Max.

But Kara said fiercely, “No! This is exactly what we need. These things, and us fighting together the way the Potterdors did. We are all we need. El Mayarah. Stronger together!”

Automatically, Alex stood behind her, and Maggie, Vasquez and James behind them. Winn, Jess and Lucy stepped behind Lena. FitzSimmons looked at each other, gave a dual gusty sigh, and joined Leslie in having Max’s back. The other students hung back, looking confused and anxious.

Elena smiled. “Yes, I rather thought you’d say that. Which is the only reason the Headmistress allowed me to bring you here and allowed the Room the one-time emergency ability to manifest the one other thing we are going to really need if we are to make your modern artifacts be of any use in this fight. Alex, you might want to don your armor. And the rest of you, pick up your weapons.”

When Kara reached for the spurtle, she saw peaking out from under the cloth, something metal, and she pushed the fabric back to reveal an odd, wide-mouthed flask embossed with the crest of House of El. Hoping no one was looking, she shoved it quickly into the pocket of her robes.

Elena waved her wand against the far wall of the room, and a fireplace appeared, with a fire that glowed green. To one side was enormous clay jar full of Floo powder.

Kara and Winn helped Alex put on the sweater, then they all turned to her, waiting. Vasquez gave her a nod.

Alex took a deep breath. “We few. We happy few.”


	44. Sometimes You Need a Chainsaw

If Lex Luthor thought that the Ministry of Magic would go easily—and he really had—he was sorely mistaken. Even with key people under the Imperius curse and much of the rank and file having been recruited for their blood loyalty and/or willingness to play along for the money, still there were people who remembered Lord V’s reign as the bad old days and didn’t fancy repeating them.

To Lex’s chagrin, the fight made it all the way up to the lobby, where the old statue of human wizards being adored by the nonhumans had first been replaced by Lord V’s throne of bones and more recently by a statue of humans and nonhumans fighting back to back. Lex had always thought Lord V had had the right idea, and one of his first goals on his to-do list had been to replace the modern monstrosity with something more akin to Lord V’s, but right now he had his own fight on his hands.

The lobby rang with explosions as wizards and witches shot spells out of their wands, slashing and burning. Chunks of stone fell from the ceiling, knocking out a small crowd of Aurors and Lex could feel the tide of the battle turning to him. Certainly, he could hear his mother laughing gleefully as she shot people with Sectumsempra and Avada Kevadra. He was a bit miffed that Luna Lovegood was limiting herself to using Expelliarmus on her own staff, but then he’d always known she was soft. And the older wizards Crabbe and Goyle were amusing themselves by petrifying their enemies, while Lex himself favored Crucio.

The lobby rang with the gurgling screams of his victims. Well, there was a reason it was a classic.

The floor was littered with bodies. Otis cheered, “We won! We won!”

But then there was an almighty flash of green in one of the largest fireplaces, and children wearing Hogwarts robes raced into the lobby, maybe two dozen of them.

Lex slid in the water and tore off his green socks to get a better grip on the wet floor, muttering, "Oh, bloody hell."

//

Alex Danvers was the first to charge out of the Ministry's fireplace and saw the bald wizard immediately and turned her path toward him. Bits of masonry fell on her, but were repelled by the sweater she wore. She shot an Impedimenta curse at him, knocking him over, but then a huge Ministry lug threw himself at her. The sweater protected her from his body, sending him reeling, but physics was physics, and she slid four yards from the impact alone before she could stop herself and pick a new target.

Fitz and Simmons were fighting back to back. Fitz had his wand in one hand and the scroll case in the other. Alex wondered what he was waiting for, but then saw Vasquez running and sliding, like the softball badass she was, into a trio of Ministry agents, screaming, "Obliviate!" and leaving them stumbling in all directions.

Winn ran around the edges of the fight, yelling, "Expelliarmus!" over and over again, managing to disarm one out of three of his targets. (In that tiny perfectionist part of her brain, Alex noted that his wandwork was a little wild.)

Leslie stuck to some electrical version of Incendio, causing small lightning bolts to hit her enemies in a bright flash that also allowed her to duck away while they recovered their sight.

Maggie went with Impedimenta, a nonlethal spell that (Alex thought) her aunt had probably taught her.

Ava and Sara, like FitzSimmons, were fighting back to back, alternating Rictusempra (Ava) and Sectumsempra (Sara), leaving their foes giggling and bleeding in their wake.

Kara (Alex noted with horror) had used her freeze breath on the water that covered most of the floor, leaving both sides sliding around helplessly.

Vasquez stuck with Stupefy. As she herself had said many times, there was a reason it was a classic. Alex grinned and shot Impedimenta at anyone who stood between them. Having someone to fight back to back with was a smart move. She needed to go have Vasquez's back.

//

Lillian Luthor was grinning as she sent as many Unforgiveable Curses as she could into the crowd combating each other around her. Shrieks of agony, splashes of blood, all of it was thrilling to her after so many years forced to work behind the scenes. And although, as a rule, she only consciously targeted adults, because yes, she was a villain from an ancestry of magical villains, but she wasn't a monster, still, sometimes the Cruciatus got a little feisty and managed to hurt a student.

Maggie, wasn't it? The niece of that strange Sandoval person? No great loss.

That was what she thought as she waved her wand and cut a swath of chaos through the lobby. "Crucio!" she yelled. Another Hufflepuff, a younger boy, went down. Again, no loss--

All that was cut off by a massive explosion of green from the fireplaces and an entire army of House Elves wearing Hogwarts tea towels came roaring her way, and some kind of projectile seemed to be yelling, "Veeeeeeengeaaaaaaaaaaance!"

And then a pair of honeydew melons exploded against her head, there was darkness, and she knew no more.

//

Lex saw the onslaught of House Elves. He saw the melons divebomb his mother in a kamikaze attack. He saw her go down. 

None of that made him stop or even slow his Cruciatus curses, but when his curses also didn't stop or even slow the House Elves racing toward him with murderous anger on their faces, it did very, very briefly, occur to him that: 

1) House Elves were very used to pain. 

2) Hogwarts House Elves routinely put out entire dinners for 840 students in a heartbeat,  
so their raining him with a shower of thousands of sharp, stiff oatmeal cookies (with walnuts) would be, as it were, a walk in the park.

and

3) No villain's reputation would last very long if he were caught on camera waist deep in thousands of oatmeal cookies, bruised, bloodied, barefoot, or, in his mother's case, covered head to toe in the guts of one very gutsy honeydew melon... person.

Stuck as he was with his wand hand buried along with him, he used his free hand to convey one of the cookies to his mouth.

Lex was a pragmatist, after all, and the Hogwarts House Elves were very talented bakers.

//

Grant Ward was a man who always had an exit strategy, and from the moment Lex Luthor had told him about the Imperius potion, he saw a way out; from the moment Lex had told him about the ancient seal with the hieroglyphs on it that Lillian had managed to smuggle to England from Egypt, he hoped he didn't have to use his failsafe.

In the guise of freeing some of the imprisoned Aurors and Curse-Breakers, who had in fact been on their side, but had gotten a little greedy, Ward missed the early part of the battle upstairs in the lobby, and as he made a side trip to get them their wands and take the long way up, he and they also managed to miss the Hogwarts Charge, but given what he knew about some of those students, the sight of them fighting like adult Aurors didn't surprise him much.

Grant Ward was a very hard man to surprise. And he sent a small fireball into the edge of the pile of--cookies?--that Lex was buried in, melting a swath of sugar ten feet long and allowing Lex to pull free.

Ward was also not a man to worry too much about hurting children. He had been a child once and he had been hearty enough to survive it. They would, or wouldn't. Destiny would decide. Amidst the flashes of light and falling bodies, he did see two things that seemed odd.

The first was a girl grabbing a scroll case, pulling out the scroll, and reading it without speaking, which was not how scrolls generally worked. Immediately he saw writhing wizards and witches jump up unscathed and broken mortar leap up to the ceiling and repair the whole hall, which was shocking enough.

Then he saw another girl with a flask and an odd spoon. She dipped it into the flask and waved it in the air, sending enormous soapy-looking bubbles flying from the spoon and landing on the fighters, sending them reeling. He dodged an enormous rainbow bubble only to step into some burning purple goo, yank himself back and go headfirst into another bubble.

Then he walked straight into a wall and fell senseless to the floor.


	45. And Sometimes, You Just Need a Spoon

Luna Lovegood felt like she had been shaken free of a terrible nightmare where she was doing the bidding of Lex and Lillian Luthor and Grant Ward, hexing her Ministry colleagues and generally doing the kind of damage she always swore she would never do. She was nauseous and her mouth was dry, and suspected she had been poisoned, or rather potioned, and the hangover was probably going to be a doozy. A fresh round of Aurors and several of the Hogwarts professors came in through the fireplace to arrest the guilty and get the kids back to school. 

Elena Sandoval came up to Luna, who handed her her wand and asked to be arrested. Elena said, "Sorry, Luna. I'm not on duty. We'll let whoever sorts this out make that call. Anybody who knows you knows that you weren't in charge of yourself."

Professor McGonnigal joined them. She was holding a blank piece of parchment. "What on Earth was that spell, Professor?" asked Luna.

"A wide-range spell reversal from the 1860s. A particularly tricky one, from what Professor Flitwick has told me. It shouldn't have worked, definitely nonverbally and certainly not without a wand."

They stood there contemplating that. Elena looked over to where Gemma Simmons was idly eating cookies with Fitz and the Hufflepuffs. "Kids are resilient," she said gratefully.

"That they are..." Professor McGonnigal waved and Selby the House Elf came over to her.

"Headmistress?"

"Mr. Selby, can you explain your unusual choice to... bombard the lobby of the Ministry of Magic with... cookies?"

"Selby is Maggie's friend, and Maggie was in trouble. Also, Lex Luthor is known to be fond of oatmeal cookies. We are allowed to give people what we know they like, especially if it is to help someone..."

"I see. And the Melon Man was Winn's friend... He sacrificed himself to take out Lillian Luthor."

"Yes, we all became friends at the same time. But Headmistress, it's almost dinner time at Hogwarts, so the House Elves need to return home to prepare it."

"Yes, excellent. Carry on."

"Did I just miss something?" asked Elena.

"Hm, well. Let's just say we need to rethink the level of our Latin education..."

//

Lex was battered and barefoot as they put him in wizardproof handcuffs and led him toward the door. Lena and Kara were standing there as he passed. Lena said, "You know we succeeded."

He smiled proudly. "I saw. What was that? The confusing concoction? As bubble spray. Ingenious. Keep up the good work. Just don't tell Mother I said that."

The Aurors followed him out, with Lillian floating along via Mobilocorpus behind them.

Kara hugged Lena. "It was the Room's idea," she whispered.

"Yes, I saw you take the flask. You know, when Ms. Sandoval said she'd asked the Room for equipment, I thought she was just psyching us up. I thought she'd brought them there herself."

Kara adjusted her glasses. "That never occurred to me."

"No, but it wouldn't, would it?"

They wandered over to the cookies. Winn had shed a few tears for his melon friend, but said, "Well, but he died a hero. So." And ate another cookie. Fitz patted him on the shoulder.

Vasquez, Alex, Sara and Ava marched over to Luna and Elena, and said how they had seen Grant Ward slip a potion right before he started attacking and they found the vial of Imperius potion half drunk in his pocket.

Elena rounded up the students and sent them back to school through the fireplace and then followed to update the teachers. Minerva McGonnigal was going to be busy sorting through the political mire. Elena didn't care for the political side. Kicking ass, taking names, seeing justice done: that was the work of an Auror. Many of these kids had said they wanted to be Aurors when they grew up. Well, they were off to a good start.


	46. St. Crispin's Feast Day

The victory feast was in full swing in the Great Hall by the time the ClawHuffleDors came marching in (along with Max, Leslie and Elena Sandoval). The feast was a day late, but the food was tasty and plentiful and everyone’s spirits were high. Stories about the fight in the lobby of the Ministry were exaggerated far past the fairly toned-down (if, strictly speaking, accurate) account put out by the Ministry itself and the slightly more colorful one published in the Daily Prophet. They ranged from Lex fighting off all of the students at once, alone, to the Hogwarts House Elves charging in to save the students from Lex’s cabal. The photos received by the Prophet from an anonymous source, which showed Lex trapped in a small mountain of cookies and Lillian being kamikazied by a Melon Person (now deceased), led more credence to the latter tale.

And if anyone noticed James looking mildly self-satisfied in the following days, no one said anything about it.

Minerva McGonnigle sat in her place front and center at the teachers’ table on the dais, beaming. Maybe “no dead students” was a low bar for end of term goals, but it worked for her.

The hall was decorated in gold and black, in honor of the first Hufflepuff House Cup win in thirteen years. The Gryffindors and Ravenclaws had come close. During the battle at the Ministry, the Ravenclaws’ use of an old unwieldy spell to undo all previous spells in a given radius—in this case the lobby of the Ministry—shouldn’t have worked. No fifth-year wizard should have been able to nullify the magic of dozens of older, stronger, and more experienced wizards, some of the strongest wizards in Britain. Of course, the parchment was blank now. Gemma Simmons said the words had erased themselves even as she read them.

The newly formed Department of Innovative Artifacts had taken charge of the four winning entries (because the Acting Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger, had chosen to honor one group from each house), saying they wanted to study the unusual processes the students had used, although privately Ms. Granger had told Minerva that keeping the spurtle in particular in a high-security vault was a high priority. The artifacts would be returned to the students either at the start of the next term or when they came of age, depending on the danger the artifacts posed.

Minerva chuckled, “Ms. Granger, why do I suspect that the Anti-Bludger Jumper will be returned to your former House in time for next Quidditch season?”

Hermione had just grinned.

After the main feast had been eaten but before dessert was served. Minerva stood to give the final announcements.

“One final thing before we indulge in strawberry shortcake! The Ministry of Magic is opening up a new program of summer internships for students. The brochure, application forms and guardian approval papers will be found in your Houses’ common rooms. I encourage interested students to apply to any of the projects that seem geared to your strengths. Have a restful summer!”

//

The Gryffindors hurried upstairs to their dorm from the feast. Alex asked Vasquez, “Does this mean we’ll be allowed to do magic over the summer?”

Vasquez shook her head. “Doubtful. My job last year was pretty much paperwork, and all by hand. The older students were told they could use magic to protect themselves if they were in danger. I think one girl did Pfeatherfall when she fell off a ladder in the file room, but that's about it.”

“Still,” said Alex, looking thoughtful. “We should definitely read the pamphlets through very carefully… It might take a few hours… Um…”

Vasquez frowned. This wasn’t like Alex at all. “Where are you going with this, Danvers?”

Alex said, “Well, we should look at them. Together. On the train home. If we can pick a good internship and get our application in tomorrow, we’d be in ahead of everybody.”

Alex fidgeted with her hands. If she had been her sister, the glasses would have been in play. Vasquez waited.

Finally, Alex blurted out. “So we’d get our first choice, right? And maybe. They’d let us. Work at the Ministry…” A deep breath. “Together.” 

Vasquez blinked. She didn’t dare breathe.

Alex’s brown eyes were big with apprehension. “Unless… you don’t want…”

“I do! Of course I do!” Vasquez couldn’t say it fast enough. “That’s brilliant! You know that none of the other kids will even start thinking about it until they’ve been home for at least a week.”

“Except for Kara.”

And Vasquez had often wondered about how Kara always managed to finish her homework with almost superspeed, presumably to have more time for calorie loading. “Except her,” she agreed. “The Ministry won’t know what to do with two Danvers girls.”

Alex blushed and Vasquez felt strangely warm. Alex flipped open her trunk and folded her clothes with military precision and… superspeed… Vasquez thought about the rumors that Kara had helped Lena crack the code in Lex’s diaries. Something about Old Kryptonese…

Nah…

Alex snapped the lid of her trunk down triumphantly.

“Hey,” said Vasquez. “That’s cheating. You started packing yesterday!”

Alex grew somber. “Not yesterday. A week ago. My grandfather had family who got out of Germany in the 1930s by the skin of their teeth. I was being proactive.”

“Yeah, my mom’s people fled to America to get away from Lord V about seventy years later.”

They shared a serious look. Vasquez sighed gustily. “It’s never too late to learn from history?”

“Pretty sure we just got lucky this time…”

“Well, we could always make a pact to keep taking History of Magic next year, if our OWLS are good enough.”

“Deal!”

And as Alex showed her the military way to fold a wizard’s robe so it took up minimal space in her trunk, Vasquez acknowledged how lucky she was.

How lucky they had all been really.

But that was the past. This was the present chugging by steam into the future.

And she, Susan Vasquez, rising sixth year and future Auror, had been, was and looked to be continuing to be very, very lucky indeed.


	47. Epilogue

In his duty as Gryffindor House Head, Professor Oliver Queen waited with the jubilant students at the Hogwarts train station, helping sort out missing animals (although Krypto now came when Oliver called, impressing the Danvers sisters and their friends no end). There were pranks, of course, but none targeting Winn or the other Hufflepuffs, not this year. The other students respected the next-level magic that had been displayed at the Ministry.

Pranks would begin again in September and no doubt the 'Puffs would suffer again. But not today.

As the last of the students disappeared onto the train and their ruckus was muffled by the locomotives closed windows, Oliver breathed a sigh. Relief? Regret? He wasn't sure. Both probably.

As he made his way back to Hagrid's hut, with no limp and barely a twinge in the cool damp of the day turning toward evening, he saw a large winged form gliding over the Forbidden Forest, heading straight for him. An owl?

Hagrid's owl landed on one of the posts that fenced Hagrid's garden. As Oliver approached, the owl stuck his leg out and Oliver detached a parchment and a small linen bag. He opened the note to see Hagrid's large round handwriting.

Dear Oliver, It was gud to see you at the Highland Games last week and gud to heer that the students ar doin well. Since it looks like we won at the Ministry, mebbe you don’t need to ask Acorn about his collekshun after all. It souns like the students are outshining the Founders anyway. But I enclose one of his favorite treats, just in case. Give him these and mebbe he'll show you one of this favorite things. Thanks fer takin care of the students and also the rutabegas. Have a plezant summer. Cheers. Hagrid

Oliver read the letter again. At the Games, he had watched Hagrid easily chuck the tallest and heaviest caber into the air and send it farther than any of the other contestants. Then, while recovering with an enormous mug of ale, he had recommended that Oliver become acquainted with the Niffler in the garden outside Hagrid’s hut, not realizing that they had already become friends. But when he had wiggled his eyebrows and told Oliver to ask Acorn about his collection, then winked, Oliver had simply thought some of the ale’s foam had gotten into his eyes, and he had forgotten about the Niffler.

But that was because he had forgotten how very bad Hagrid was about being circumspect, much less clandestine.

Curious, Oliver opened the little bag and got a strong whiff of licorice. He took one of the little black bits and put it in his mouth. The taste was exquisite. He groaned in surprise.

. Suddenly, down at his feet, Acorn was snuffling eagerly and squeaking, tugging on his robes.

“Hey, little buddy,” said Oliver. “I saw Hagrid last week. He sends his regards. Also, licorice. Do you want--”

Instantly the little guy was scrambling up to Oliver's shoulder, and pointed to his own mouth.

“Oh, did you want some?” Oliver fed him one bit of licorice, watching him moan happily, rub his tummy and practically purr into Oliver's ear. "You like that? I'll give you the whole bag, if you want."

The Niffler hugged Oliver around the neck.

"Although Hagrid did say that you might be willing to show me your favorite thing..."

Acorn seemed to consider, then extended one small paw. Oliver gave him the little bag of candy, and Acorn scampered down his robes, across the garden, and down one of his many bolt holes.

Oliver waited, watching the sun slowly disappear behind the distant mountains. The air grew gradually cooler as the light began to fade. Finally, just as Oliver decided that the Niffler had no intention of showing him anything, he heard shuffling behind him. He turned to see Acorn backing out of another tiny hole, this time dragging with him…

A shiny golden spoon, a bit longer and wider than an average teaspoon, with three diamond-shaped onyx stones set in the handle. Oliver bent down as Acorn turned the spoon back and forth to catch the last light of the setting sun. On the back of the handle, Oliver saw the elaborate initials, HH.

“Holy Hiding Place, Batman…”

Acorn nodded, satisfied, and took the spoon and dragged it back down the hole.

Oliver stood, watching the setting sun’s light fading from the towers of the ancient and illustrious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the safest place in Britain to hide something powerful and dangerous, where, over the centuries, such tools, artifacts and weapons had been carefully guarded by some of the most powerful and dangerous wizards and witches the world had ever known.

And apparently, one very small Niffler.

Oliver Queen leaned back, and laughed and laughed and laughed.

 

FINIS


End file.
